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Placozoa: at least two

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Abstract

It was shown that compensatory base changes (CBCs) in internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) sequence-structure alignments can be used for distinguishing species. Using the ITS2 Database in combination with 4SALE — a tool for synchronous RNA sequence and secondary structure alignment and editing — in this study we present an in-depth CBC analysis for placozoan ITS2 sequences and their respective secondary structures. This analysis indicates at least two distinct species in Trichoplax (Placozoa) supporting a recently suggested hypothesis, that Placozoa is “no longer a phylum of one”.

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Sujatha Thankeswaran Parvathy, Varatharajalu Udayasuriyan & Vijaipal Bhadana

Abbreviations

CBC:

compensatory base change

ITS2:

internal transcribed spacer 2

ML:

maximum likelihood

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Correspondence to Matthias Wolf.

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The first two authors contributed equally to this work.

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Wolf, M., Selig, C., Müller, T. et al. Placozoa: at least two. Biologia 62, 641–645 (2007). https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-007-0143-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-007-0143-z

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