Feature Animals

Year in review: Insect, bird evolution revisited

Genetic analyses produce new family trees

insect

RETHINKING LINKS  Insects got an entirely new family tree after an extensive genetic analysis rearranged the creatures' relations.

Dr. Oliver Niehuis, ZFMK, Bonn

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

14

Biologists in 2014 saw what an astronomical amount of data could do for evolutionary questions — and what it couldn’t.

Bernhard Misof of the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn, Germany, and 100 coauthors, published an evolutionary family tree of insects and close relatives based on the subset of some 1,478 genes shared by 144 kinds of organisms (SN: 12/13/14, p.