Re: What is best current estimate of eukaryote evolutionary tree?


Robert,

I am a senior co-author on the Adl et al. 2005 paper. John Corliss is
retired and no longer well enough to comment on this topic, but having
known him for nearly 30 years I am well familiar with his work.

The Bryozoa (either narrowly or broadly defined) are metazoa and thus
are, strictly speaking, not considered protists. Protists being
eukaryotes that are not clearly metazoa, fungi, or vascular plants.
Not a satisfying definition I know, but it is essentially how we now
use the term.

Thus the Bryozoa are not protists, although the closest metazoan
relatives, the choanoflagellates, are protists. Sponges are metazoa.
All of them, metazoa + choanoflagellates + fungi + DRIPS (a group of
related protists) are members of the supergroup Opisthokonts, (single
posteriorly located cilium being the apomorphy of the clade). The
Opisthokont clade, with metazoa/choanoflagellates being sister to the
fungi, is very well supported by a variety of molecular sequence
analysis.

I am out of my comfort zone talking about metazoan phylogeny so I
cannot address your very specific and interesting question of
bryozoans. I just know that we (and Corliss) no longer consider them
to be "protists"

Hope that helps.


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