Chuck calls this the MA Hypothesis. According to it, the vertebrates comprise a monophyletic assemblage. Learn about connections between vertebrate evolution and development. We can think of vertebrates as being different from each other in a Darwinian sense, because of natural selection and the adaptations each species has. However, we can also think about this in a different way.
Vertebrates have complex bodies, which they acquire through development.
This is a main focus of this course, and we hope that you will write a final term paper focusing on this question. This is a really new field in science, and is currently one of the hottest areas of study. They have large, complex genomes. Large genomes have large numbers of genes, which provide for complex bodies. Moreover, we observe that the vertebrate genome contains many related copies of the same gene.