Download or read book Interrelationships of the Platyhelminthes written by D T J Littlewood and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interrelationships of the Platyhelminthes elucidates the role of the flatworms in the animal kingdom. It brings together results from an international group of experts, spanning many disciplines, who give evidence for the phylogeny of flatworms and constituent major taxa. A combined approach, using traditional comparative techniques along with the modern techniques of molecular phylogeny, is utilized to show that the monophyly of the phylum is not fully established, and that the phylum may in fact consist of two groups: the acoels and their relatives, which are basal metazoans, and the Rhabditophora, which is a more derived group.