Founders' Lecture 2024
1st November 2024. Professor Max Telford, University College London
Founders' Lecture
1st November 2024, 6:00 pm
Invited speaker: Prof Max Telford (University College London)
Are we really more closely related to starfish than to earthworms?
Almost all species of animals belong to the Bilateria, a group of animals defined by their bilateral symmetry – mirror image left and right sides to their body. The clade of the Bilateria has itself been divided into two great branches – the protostomes (most invertebrates) and the deuterostomes which includes starfish and sea urchins (echinoderms) and our own phylum of chordates. The monophyly of the deuterostome branch has been a rare point of agreement amongst zoologists for more than a century.
Published molecular phylogenetic studies have not, however, consistently supported deuterostome monophyly. Intrigued by this we have been looking into the support for the deuterostome branch. I will describe experiments in which we have tested whether some (or even all) the support for a monophyletic deuterostome branch might come from systematic error. Our results suggest that, if deuterostomes are indeed a clade, they are separated from the bilaterian common ancestor (Urbilateria) by a very short branch. Deuterostomes are expected to have few if any obvious synapomorphies that distinguish them from Urbilateria. This finding has implications for understanding the origins of the chordates and for the interpretation of some bizarre Cambrian fossils that have been linked to the deuterostome branch of the animal tree of life.
The Linnean Society on London. Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BF United Kingdom.
About Max Telford
Max Telford is an evolutionary biologist working to reconstruct the story of early evolution of the animal kingdom. His lab uses genetic data to infer the evolutionary relationships between major groups of animals. His lab has chosen to work on some of the most difficult branches of the animal tree, developing new sources of data and methods of analyses to tackle these controversial questions. Max took his BA in Zoology in the Department of Zoology in Oxford in 1989 and defended his D.Phil in Oxford in 1993. He then spent time as a Postdoctoral fellow in Paris and at the Natural History Museum in London. In 2000 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship in Cambridge. In 2003 he was appointed to a Lectureship in Zoology at UCL and in 2019 he was appointed to the Jodrell Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. He is the Founder and director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE). His first book “The Tree of Life: Solving Science’s Greatest Puzzle” will be published by John Murray and Norton Books in April 2025.
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