Journal article
Deep phylogeny, ancestral groups and the four ages of life
- Abstract:
- Organismal phylogeny depends on cell division, stasis, mutational divergence, cell mergers (by sex or symbiogenesis), lateral gene transfer and death. The tree of life is a useful metaphor for organismal genealogical history provided we recognize that branches sometimes fuse. Hennigian cladistics emphasizes only lineage splitting, ignoring most other major phylogenetic processes. Though methodologically useful it has been conceptually confusing and harmed taxonomy, especially in mistakenly opposing ancestral (paraphyletic) taxa. The history of life involved about 10 really major innovations in cell structure. In membrane topology, there were five successive kinds of cell: (i) negibacteria, with two bounding membranes, (ii) unibacteria, with one bounding and no integral membranes, (iii) eukaryotes with endomembranes and mitochondria, (iv) plants with chloroplasts and (v) finally, chromists with plastids inside the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Membrane chemistry divides negibacteria into the more advanced Glycobacteria (e.g. Cyanobacteria and Proteobacteria) with outer membrane lipolysaccharide and primitive Eobacteria without lipopolysaccharide (deserving intenser study). It also divides unibacteria into posibacteria, ancestors of eukaryotes, and archaebacteria - the sisters (not ancestors) of eukaryotes and the youngest bacterial phylum. Anaerobic eobacteria, oxygenic cyanobacteria, desiccation-resistant posibacteria and finally neomura (eukaryotes plus archaebacteria) successively transformed Earth. Accidents and organizational constraints are as important and adaptiveness in body plan evolution.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Version of record, bin, 1.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1098/rstb.2009.0161
Authors
- Publisher:
- Royal Society Publishing
- Journal:
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B More from this journal
- Volume:
- 365
- Issue:
- 1537
- Pages:
- 111-132
- Publication date:
- 2010-01-01
- Edition:
- Publisher's version
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-2970
- ISSN:
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0962-8436
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- UUID:
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uuid:f4d5f99c-7dcc-4196-b50f-f38839b185ab
- Local pid:
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ora:3491
- Deposit date:
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2010-03-10
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Cavalier-Smith, T
- Copyright date:
- 2010
- Notes:
- Citation: Cavalier-Smith, T. (2010). 'Deep phylogeny, ancestral groups and the four ages of life', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365(1537), 111-132. [Available at http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/]. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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