Before the ink is dry on the revision of the tree of life, giving comb jellies pride of place near the base , we now need to redraw the tree again.
“ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2008) — Darwin’s tree of life represents the path and estimates the time evolution took to get to the current diversity of life. Now, new findings suggest that this tree, an icon of evolution, may need to be redrawn. In research to be published in the April 13 advance online issue of Nature, researchers at Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo have joined forces to reveal that insects have adopted a strategy to detect odors that is radically different from those of other organisms — an unexpected and controversial finding that may dissolve a dominant ideology in the field.
These ion channels don’t resemble any known ion channel on Earth. The insect olfactory receptor is unique.”