Journal article
Lack of support for Deuterostomia prompts reinterpretation of the first bilateria
- Abstract:
- The bilaterally symmetric animals (Bilateria) are considered to comprise two monophyletic groups, Protostomia (Ecdysozoa and the Lophotrochozoa) and Deuterostomia (Chordata and the Xenambulacraria). Recent molecular phylogenetic studies have not consistently supported deuterostome monophyly. Here, we compare support for Protostomia and Deuterostomia using multiple, independent phylogenomic datasets. As expected, Protostomia is always strongly supported, especially by longer and higher-quality genes. Support for Deuterostomia, however, is always equivocal and barely higher than support for paraphyletic alternatives. Conditions that cause tree reconstruction errors—inadequate models, short internal branches, faster evolving genes, and unequal branch lengths—coincide with support for monophyletic deuterostomes. Simulation experiments show that support for Deuterostomia could be explained by systematic error. The branch between bilaterian and deuterostome common ancestors is, at best, very short, supporting the idea that the bilaterian ancestor may have been deuterostome-like. Our findings have important implications for the understanding of early animal evolution.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, 1.2MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Authors
- Publisher:
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Journal:
- Science Advances More from this journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 12
- Article number:
- eabe2741
- Publication date:
- 2021-03-19
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-02-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2375-2548
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1168887
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1168887
- Deposit date:
-
2021-03-22
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Kapli, P et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record