Colonization of the ocean floor by jawless vertebrates across three mass extinctions
Abstract
The deep (> 200 m) ocean floor is often considered to be a refugium of biodiversity; many benthic marine animals appear to share ancient common ancestry with nearshore and terrestrial relatives. Whether this pattern holds for vertebrates is obscured by a poor understanding of the evolutionary history of the oldest marine vertebrate clades. Hagfishes are jawless vertebrates that are either the living sister to all vertebrates or form a clade with lampreys, the only other surviving jawless fishes.
- Publication:
-
BMC Ecology and Evolution
- Pub Date:
- June 2024
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 2024BMCEE..24...79B
- Keywords:
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- Hagfishes;
- Phylogenetics;
- Jawless Vertebrates;
- Continental Slope;
- Habitat