Advertisement

Perspective

Evolution

The Animal Tree of Life

A molecular phylogeny of the animal kingdom published 25 years ago was the precursor to today's widely accepted phylogeny of all animal phyla.

Maximilian J. TelfordAuthors Info & Affiliations

Science

15 Feb 2013

Vol 339, Issue 6121

pp. 764-766

DOI: 10.1126/science.1234378

Abstract

In a letter to T. H. Huxley written on 26 September 1857, Charles Darwin imagined a time to come "though I shall not live to see it, when we shall have very fairly true genealogical trees of each great kingdom of nature" (1). The publication of On the Origin of Species, two years later, prompted a century and a half of disagreement among zoologists proposing often wildly contradictory schemes of animal evolution. Clarity began to emerge with Field et al.'s landmark publication 25 years ago of an analysis of animal relationships based on ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequences (2). The paper made zoologists realize that molecular biology could and should be applied to traditional zoological questions.

Get full access to this article

View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.

References and Notes

1

Darwin C. R., Letter to T. H. Huxley (1857); www.darwinproject.ac.uk, Letter 2143.

2

Field K. G., et al., Science 239, 748 (1988).

3

Telford M. J., Copley R. R., Trends Genet. 27, 186 (2011).

4

Saiki R. K., et al., Science 239, 487 (1988).

5

Lane D. J., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 82, 6955 (1985).

6

Ohama T., Kumazaki T., Hori H., Osawa S., Nucleic Acids Res. 12, 5101 (1984).

7

Balavoine G., C.R. Acad. Sci. III 320, 83 (1997).

8

Felsenstein J., Syst. Zool. 27, 401 (1978).

9

Lartillot N., Philippe H., Mol. Biol. Evol. 21, 1095 (2004).

10

Holland P. H., The Animal Kingdom (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK, 2011).

11

Aguinaldo A. M., et al., Nature 387, 489 (1997).

12

Philippe H., Lartillot N., Brinkmann H., Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1246 (2005).

13

Delsuc F., Brinkmann H., Chourrout D., Philippe H., Nature 439, 965 (2006).

14

Halanych K. M., Biol. Bull. 190, 1 (1996).

15

Philippe H., et al., Nature 470, 255 (2011).

(0)eLetters

eLetters is a forum for ongoing peer review. eLetters are not edited, proofread, or indexed, but they are screened. eLetters should provide substantive and scholarly commentary on the article. Embedded figures cannot be submitted, and we discourage the use of figures within eLetters in general. If a figure is essential, please include a link to the figure within the text of the eLetter. Please read our Terms of Service before submitting an eLetter.

Log In to Submit a Response

Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Science

Volume 339 | Issue 6121
15 February 2013

Copyright

Copyright © 2013, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Submission history

Published in print: 15 February 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Acknowledgments

M.J.T. is supported by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

Authors

Affiliations

Maximilian J. Telford

Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.

View all articles by this author

Notes

E-mail: [email protected]

Metrics & Citations

Metrics

Article Usage

Altmetrics

Citations

Cite as

Maximilian J. Telford

,

The Animal Tree of Life.Science339,764-766(2013).DOI:10.1126/science.1234378

Export citation

Select the format you want to export the citation of this publication.

Cited by

- O. V. Ezhova,
- V. V. Malakhov,
Origin of Echinodermata, Paleontological Journal, 56, 8, (938-973), (2022).https://doi.org/10.1134/S0031030122080020
Crossref
- Limin Lu,
- Cymon J. Cox,
- Sarah Mathews,
- Wei Wang,
- Jun Wen,
- Zhiduan Chen,
Optimal data partitioning, multispecies coalescent and Bayesian concordance analyses resolve early divergences of the grape family (Vitaceae), Cladistics, 34, 1, (57-77), (2017).https://doi.org/10.1111/cla.12191
Crossref
- Maximilian J. Telford,
- Graham E. Budd,
- Hervé Philippe,
Phylogenomic Insights into Animal Evolution, Current Biology, 25, 19, (R876-R887), (2015).https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.07.060
Crossref
- Juan I. Castrillo,
- Stephen G. Oliver,
1 Yeast as a Model for Systems Biology Studies on Complex Diseases, Fungal Genomics, (3-30), (2014).https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45218-5_1
Crossref

View Options

Check Access

Log in to view the full text

AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS Members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.

Log in via OpenAthens.

Log in via Shibboleth.

More options

Purchase digital access to this article

Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.

Purchase this issue in print

Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.

View options

PDF format

Download this article as a PDF file

Full Text

Media

Figures

Multimedia

Tables

View full text|Download PDF