Genome-scale data and the development of novel statistical phylogenetic approaches have
greatly aided the reconstruction of a broad sketch of the tree of life and resolved many of its …

Insects comprise over half of all described animal species. Together with the Protura
(coneheads), Collembola (springtails) and Diplura (two-pronged bristletails), insects form …

Artificial intelligence-based protein structure prediction methods such as AlphaFold have
revolutionized structural biology. The accuracies of these predictions vary, however, and …

Proper biological interpretation of a phylogeny can sometimes hinge on the placement of
key taxa—or fail when such key taxa are not sampled. In this light, we here present the first …

Resolving the early diversification of animal lineages has proven difficult, even using
genome-scale datasets. Several phylogenomic studies have supported the classical …

Proteins have distinct structural and functional constraints at different sites that lead to site-
specific preferences for particular amino acid residues as the sequences evolve …

The relationships at the root of the animal tree have proven difficult to resolve, with the
current debate focusing on whether sponges (phylum Porifera) or comb jellies (phylum …

The evolutionary relationships of two animal phyla, Ctenophora and Xenacoelomorpha,
have proved highly contentious. Ctenophora have been proposed as the most distant …

Resolving the relationships between the major lineages in the animal tree of life is
necessary to understand the origin and evolution of key animal traits. Sponges …

Ctenophora, comprising approximately 200 described species, is an important lineage for
understanding metazoan evolution and is of great ecological and economic importance …