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Molecular Biology and Evolution 18:437-442 (2001)
© 2001 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution

LETTER

Elongation Factor 1-Alpha Sequences Alone Do Not Assist in Resolving the Position of the Acoela Within the Metazoa

D. Timothy J. Littlewood3,*, Peter D. Olson*, Maximilian J. Telford*{dagger}, Elisabeth A. Herniou* and Marta Riutort{ddagger}

*Department of Zoology, Natural History Museum, London, England;
{dagger}Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England; and
{ddagger}Department of Genetics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Following years of debate, and thanks largely to molecular systematic studies, the long-held idea that the phylum Platyhelminthes is the most basal branch of the bilaterian Metazoa has been widely abandoned (e.g., Haszprunar 1996Citation ; Carranza, Baguñà, and Riutort 1997Citation ; Hausdorf 2000Citation ). This new status quo has been upset by a recent paper that has suggested that the Platyhelminthes are polyphyletic and that a single "flatworm" clade, the Acoela, is the most basal extant bilaterian lineage distinct from the other platyhelminths (Ruiz-Trillo et al. 1999Citation ). The potential importance of the acoels being confirmed as the outgroup to all other bilaterians is that they would then be instrumental in determining the character states of the ancestral Bilateria through outgroup comparison and thus greatly further our understanding of the evolution of the animals. The currently recognized outgroup—the diploblasts—are generally too evolutionarily and phenotypically distant for this sort of comparison . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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