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Jun 04, 2023

Debate Settled: Comb Jellies Are the Sister Group to All Other Animals

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For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago.Searching among today's most primitive-looking animals for the earliest branch of the animal tree of life, scientists gradually narrowed the possibilities down to two groups: sponges, which spend their entire adult lives in one spot, filtering food from seawater; and comb jellies, voracious predators that oar their way through the world's oceans in search of food.

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Reference: Schultz DT, Haddock SHD, Bredeson JV, Green RE, Simakov O, Rokhsar DS. Ancient gene linkages support ctenophores as sister to other animals. Nature. 2023. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-05936-6

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