Multigene Analyses of Bilaterian Animals Corroborate the Monophyly of Ecdysozoa, Lophotrochozoa, and Protostomia
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Almost a decade ago, a new phylogeny of bilaterian animals was inferred from small-subunit ribosomal RNA (rRNA) that claimed the monophyly of two major groups of protostome animals: Ecdysozoa (e.g., arthropods, nematodes, onychophorans, and tardigrades) and Lophotrochozoa (e.g., annelids, molluscs, platyhelminths, brachiopods, and rotifers). However, it received little additional support. In fact, several multigene analyses strongly argued against this new phylogeny. These latter studies were based on a large amount of sequence data and therefore showed an apparently strong statistical support. Yet, they covered only a few taxa (those for which complete genomes were available), making systematic artifacts of tree reconstruction more probable. Here we expand this sparse taxonomic sampling and analyze a large data set (146 genes, 35,371 positions) from a diverse sample of animals (35 species). Our study demonstrates that the incongruences observed between rRNA and multigene analyses were indeed due to long-branch attraction artifacts, illustrating the enormous impact of systematic biases on phylogenomic studies. A refined analysis of our data set excluding the most biased genes provides strong support in favor of the new animal phylogeny and in addition suggests that urochordates are more closely related to vertebrates than are cephalochordates. These findings have important implications for the interpretation of morphological and genomic data.
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The increased difficulty in overcoming LBA in the LEAP dataset compared to LEAN is because platyhelminths are more distantly related to arthropods than nematodes, and hence their shared evolutionary history and the internal branch joining these lineages is shorter.
“This is because although both lineages are fast evolving, platyhelminths (LEAP) are more distantly related to arthropods than nematodes (LEAN), and hence their shared evolutionary history, and the internal branch joining these lineages, is shorter57,58.”
From Evidence for sponges as sister to all other animals from partitioned phylogenomics with mixture models and recoding (2021) · cites this paper as [57]
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- Authors
- Philippe, H., Lartillot, N., & Brinkmann, H.
- Affiliations
- Université de Montréal (CA)
- Venue
- Molecular Biology and Evolution
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2005-02-09
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1246-1253
- ISSN
- 0737-4038 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-1719
- OpenAlex
- W2136096754
- Cited by
- 551
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 30.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Molecular Biology and Evolution (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- University of Oklahoma
- National Institutes of Health (5u01ai048594-02)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (U01 AI48594, AI147087, AI147079, AI47087, AI48594)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Invertebrate Taxonomy and Ecology
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Marine Invertebrate Physiology and Ecology
- Keywords
- Ecdysozoa, Lophotrochozoa, Protostomia, multilocus phylogeny, small subunit rRNA phylogeny, long-branch attraction, systematic bias, tunicates, cephalochordates, vertebrate origin, gene tree discordance
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Multigene Family, Invertebrates, Phylogeny, RNA, Ribosomal, Evolution, Molecular
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