ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences-the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 39 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 149 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The hard steps model and whole Earth-system transitions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Planar cell polarity coordination in a cnidarian embryo provides clues to animal body axis evolution.eLife · 2025Article
- A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life.Science advances · 2025Review
- Placozoan secretory cell types implicated in feeding, innate immunity and regulation of behavior.PloS one · 2025Article
- The Palaeobiology of Two Crown Group Cnidarians:Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Genomic sequencing reveals convergent adaptation during experimental evolution in two budding yeast species.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Two Notorious Nodes: A Critical Examination of Relaxed Molecular Clock Age Estimates of the Bilaterian Animals and Placental Mammals.Systematic biology · 2024Article
- On the origin of the functional versatility of macrophages.Frontiers in physiology · 2023Article
- Cancer genes and cancer stem cells in tumorigenesis: Evolutionary deep homology and controversies.Genes & diseases · 2022Review
- CRISPR/Cas9-induced disruption of Bodo saltans paraflagellar rod-2 gene reveals its importance for cell survival.Environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Mechano-biochemical marine stimulation of inversion, gastrulation, and endomesoderm specification in multicellular Eukaryota.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Article
- Sex Determination in Nematode Germ Cells.Sexual development : genetics, molecular biology, evolution, endocrinology, embryology, and pathology of sex determination and differentiation · 2022Review
- Placozoan fiber cells: mediators of innate immunity and participants in wound healing.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The origin of animals: an ancestral reconstruction of the unicellular-to-multicellular transition.Open biology · 2021Review
- Organization of the Pluripotent Genome.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evolving multicellularity is easy, especially in phototrophs and osmotrophs whose multicells feed like unicells. Evolving animals was much harder and unique; probably only one pathway via benthic 'zoophytes' with pelagic ciliated larvae allowed trophic continuity from phagocytic protozoa to gut-endowed animals. Choanoflagellate protozoa produced sponges. Converting sponge flask cells mediating larval settling to synaptically controlled nematocysts arguably made Cnidaria. I replace Haeckel's gastraea theory by a sponge/coelenterate/bilaterian pathway: Placozoa, hydrozoan diploblasty and ctenophores were secondary; stem anthozoan developmental mutations arguably independently generated coelomate bilateria and ctenophores. I emphasize animal origin's conceptual aspects (selective, developmental) related to feeding modes, cell structure, phylogeny of related protozoa, sequence evidence, ecology and palaeontology. Epithelia and connective tissue could evolve only by compensating for dramatically lower feeding efficiency that differentiation into non-choanocytes entails. Consequentially, larger bodies enabled filtering more water for bacterial food and harbouring photosynthetic bacteria, together adding more food than cell differentiation sacrificed. A hypothetical presponge of sessile triploblastic sheets (connective tissue sandwiched between two choanocyte epithelia) evolved oogamy through selection for larger dispersive ciliated larvae to accelerate benthic trophic competence and overgrowing protozoan competitors. Extinct Vendozoa might be elaborations of this organismal grade with choanocyte-bearing epithelia, before poriferan water channels and cnidarian gut/nematocysts/synapses evolved.This article is part of the themed issue 'Evo-devo in the genomics era, and the origins of morphological diversity'.
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