New concepts based on advances in animal systematics
The way in which most multicellular organisms have been classified has been the same for more than a century. Only recently have scientists developed the tools and knowledge to question the way we classify organisms. The data accumulated from these newly developed techniques has the potential to change how future generations of scientists classify organisms and understand the connections between them. Professor Noriyuki Satoh from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, as well as Professors Daniel Rokhsar of University California, Berkeley and Teruaki Nishikawa of Toho University, Funabashi, have conducted the research resulting in their new article in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which proposes a substantial change to how animals, chordates in particular, are classified.