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

Abstract The Cambrian Explosion by nature is a three-phased explosion of animal body
plans alongside episodic biomineralization, pulsed change of generic diversity, body size …

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

In lineages of allopolyploid origin, sets of homoeologous chromosomes may coexist that
differ in gene content and syntenic structure. Presence or absence of genes and …

Over the last 470 Ma, plant evolution has seen major evolutionary transitions, such as the
move from water to land and the origins of vascular tissues, seeds, and flowers [1]. These …

Contamination of genomes is an increasingly recognized problem affecting several
downstream applications, from comparative evolutionary genomics to metagenomics. Here …

Placozoans are a phylum of nonbilaterian marine animals currently represented by a single
described species, Trichoplax adhaerens, Schulze 1883. Placozoans arguably show the …

Two hypotheses for the early radiation of the metazoans are vividly discussed in recent
phylogenomic studies, the 'Porifera-first'hypothesis, which places the poriferans as the sister …