I would be grateful if somebody could help me out here as Bioinformatics is not my strong card.
Regarding the recent Nature publication
New deep-sea species of Xenoturbella and the position of Xenacoelomorpha
I query the authors’ explanation; to wit…
The sister group relationship between Nephrozoa and
Xenacoelomorpha supported by our phylogenomic analyses implies that the last common ancestor of bilaterians was probably a benthic, ciliated acoelomate worm with a single opening into an epithelial gut, and that excretory organs, coelomic cavities, and nerve cords evolved after xenacoelomorphs separated from the stem lineage of Nephrozoa.
My problem arises with their placement of Ctenophora on their own phylogenetic tree as the “more primitive out-group” (for lack of better words on the spur of a rushed moment). Myself, I always considered Ctenophora as bilateral – in this case more primitively bilateral which IMHO should root the bilateran tree… which of course begs more than one question upon rereading their analysis.
Forget Ctenophores – what about Cnidarians!? Some taxonomists argue that Cnidarians are descendents of ancient bilateral coelomates and not the other way around. Biologists have known since the 1920s that Cnideria had a directive axis which gave them right and left-hand sides. Volker Schmidt goes on to argue that non-radially organized hydrozoan larvae have an anterior concentration of sensory and ganglionic nerve elements, suggesting that a fundamental genetic toolkit for the establishment of bilateral and polarized anatomies was already present before the Cnidaria-Bilateria divergence. Volker Schmidt goes so far as to suggest that diploblastic status of adult Cniderians is derived and that true mesoderm can be even be detected during Cniderian embryogenesis. OK – I concede that last argument is particularly contentious… but you get my drift.
I am partial to the notion the UrBilateran that subsequently gave rise to “Protostomes” & Deuterostomes and was itself coelomate with possessed a dorsal nerve chord. Any subsequent acoelomy and pseudocoelomy was derived… ditto ventral nerve chords. But hey… now I am being really contentious!