Phylogenomics resolves the evolutionary chronicle of our squirting closest relatives

Abstract

A recent paper in BMC Biology has resolved the family relationships of sea squirts, one of our closest invertebrate relatives, by using a large phylogenomic data set derived from available genomes and newly generated transcriptomes. The work confirms previous ideas that ascidians (the sea squirts) are not monophyletic, as they include some pelagic jelly-like relatives, and proposes a chronogram for a group that has been difficult to resolve due to their accelerated genome evolution. See research article: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-018-0499-2