OEB Seminar Series

Gonzalo Giribet
Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
"Working towards a resolved animal tree of life: Big challenges and possible solutions"

Abstract: Resolving the animal tree of life has been challenging due to the difficulties in reconciling morphological and genetic evolution and thus in recognizing which characters show less homoplasy and are better to explain metazoan evolution. Were the first animals simple creatures without tissues or nerve systems, as traditionally believed, or complex with well-defined tissues and well-developed nervous systems? Did segmentation, coeloms, and excretory organs originate once or multiple times through animal life? These simple questions have been extremely difficult to answer due to the failure in reconstruction some key steps in the evolutionary history of animals. Here I will discuss some of the open questions and challenges in reconstructing the phylogeny of metazoans, where it is resolved and where should we focus future efforts, especially in light of the availability of the rapidly evolving field of DNA sequencing.