MART� MUS, M.*; BERGSTR�M, J.: The skeleto-muscular system of hyolithids Hyolithids are Palaeozoic bilaterians with a calcareous exoskeleton consisting of a conical conch, an operculum and a pair of long, curved “spines” called helens. They belong to the group Hyolitha, which includes other operculate, conical forms lacking helens. Hyoliths were protostomes likely related both with […]

GIRIBET, G: The big picture of metazoan evolution: a combined approach In this talk I will discuss some of the most debated metazoan relationships, and will present results of a combined analysis of morphology and multiple molecular loci, including sequence data of 350 species representing all metazoan phyla.

MALLATT, Jon M; CHEN , Jun-Yuan: The Cambrian fossil Haikouella and the origin of the craniates Haikouella lanceolatum is a fossil deuterstome that is known from many well-preserved specimens from the Early Cambrian of China (Nature 402:518). It has been interpreted as craniate-like or else as resembling the basal deuterostome, but here we analyze its […]

JACOBS, David K: Operational and biological factors bias molecular rate calculation leading to spurious early divergence dates for the metazoan radiation. Many have employed an assumption of a molecular clocks combined with statistical methods to extrapolate from known tie points in the fossil record to infer divergence times. These methods applied to amino acid sequence […]

PASSAMANECK, Y.J.*; HALANYCH, K.M.: Molluscan phylogenetics inferred from 28S rDNA and 18S rDNA sequences. The Mollusca are recognized as one of the most diverse and specious of metazoan phyla. The relationships between the major groups within this clade have been a subject of ongoing debate. In particular, the origins of aplachophorans and polyplachophorans, which are […]

EERNISSE, D.J.; AMER, A.A.; MCCAMAN, R.E.; ONO, J.K.: Gene duplication in gastropod (Mollusca) nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) proteins is associated with neuronal vs. neuromuscular specialization. One of us (AAA) has recently sequenced the alpha subunits of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor proteins (nAChRs) from the central nervous system (CNS) and buccal muscles (BM) of the gastropod molluscs, […]

MALLATT, Jon M ; WINCHELL , Christopher J: Use of combined large-subunit and small-subunit ribosomal RNA sequences to classify the protostomes and deuterostomes The small-subunit ribosomal RNA gene (SSU rRNA) is most widely used for molecular systematics, but we have added large-subunit (LSU) rRNA sequences from about forty taxa of protostome and deuterostome animals. The […]

WINCHELL, Christopher J.*; MARTIN, Andrew P.; MALLATT, Jon: Phylogeny of Living Elasmobranchs Based on LSU and SSU rRNA-Gene Sequences For over a century, debate on the higher-level phylogeny of elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, and rays), has focussed on affinities of the morphologically unique members of this group, such as skates and rays (batoids), Chlamydoselachus, Heterodontus, and […]

BRISCOE, Adriana D.: Parallel Evolution of Red-Green Color Vision in Bees and Butterflies A comparative approach was taken to identifying amino acid substitutions that may be under positive selection and are correlated with spectral shifts among orthologous and paralogous bee and butterfly long wavelength-sensitive (LW) opsins. Four novel LW opsin fragments were isolated, cloned and […]

HAYASHI, C.Y.: Convergent Evolution of Sequence Elements in Spider and Insect Silk Proteins Silks spun from the abdominal glands of spiders and silks drawn from the labial glands of insects are considered to be independently evolved proteins. Surprisingly, the amino acid sequences of some spider silks are much more similar to the sequences of moth […]