| Protostomes Temporal range:
| |
|---|---|
 | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Subkingdom: | Eumetazoa |
| Clade: | ParaHoxozoa |
| Clade: | Bilateria |
| Clade: | Nephrozoa |
| (unranked): | Protostomia Grobben, 1908 |
| Superphyla | |
Protostomia (/ˌproʊtəˈstoʊmi.ə/) is the clade of animals once thought to be characterized by the formation of the organism's mouth before its anus during embryonic development. This nature has since been discovered to be extremely variable among Protostomia's members, although the reverse is typically true of its sister clade, Deuterostomia.[1][2] Well-known examples of protostomes are arthropods, molluscs, annelids, flatworms and nematodes. They are also called schizocoelomates since schizocoely typically occurs in them.
Together with the Deuterostomia and Xenacoelomorpha, these form the clade Bilateria, animals with bilateral symmetry, anteroposterior axis and three germ layers.[3]
- ^ Hejnol, A.; Martindale, M. Q. (2009). "The mouth, the anus, and the blastopore - open questions about questionable openings". In M. J. Telford; D. T. J. Littlewood (eds.). Animal Evolution — Genomes, Fossils, and Trees. pp. 33–40.
- ^ Martín-Durán, José M.; Passamaneck, Yale J.; Martindale, Mark Q.; Hejnol, Andreas (2016). "The developmental basis for the recurrent evolution of deuterostomy and protostomy". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 1 (1): 0005. doi:10.1038/s41559-016-0005. PMID 28812551. S2CID 90795.
- ^ Hejnol, A.; Obst, M.; Stamatakis, A.; Ott, M.; Rouse, G. W.; Edgecombe, G. D.; et al. (2009). "Assessing the root of bilaterian animals with scalable phylogenomic methods". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 276 (1677): 4261–4270. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.0896. PMC 2817096. PMID 19759036.