ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2025
Sponges, ctenophores, and the statistical significance of syntenies.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 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
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Phylogenomic mixture models outperform homogeneous and partitioned models.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- The 3D architecture of the ctenophore aboral organ and the evolution of complex integrative centers in animals.Science advances · 2026Article
- Toward a genomic understanding of the tree of life.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history.Science advances · 2026Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
Shared fusions between ancestral chromosomal linkage groups have previously been used to support phylogenetic groupings, notably sponges with cnidarians and bilaterians to the exclusion of ctenophores, rendering ctenophores the sister group to all other animals. The linkage groups used to identify these fusions were assessed for statistical significance relative to a model of randomly shuffled genes. I argue that the method of random shuffling treated all species as equally distant from each other and so overestimated the significance of the observed linkages. I calculate alternative statistics and further argue that there are likely to be real linkage groups that are not identified as significant. If linkage groups are not supported statistically, they cannot reliably be used to identify shared derived chromosomal rearrangements, and hence phylogenetic hypotheses derived from them are suspect.
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