Talk:Parazoa

Undeletion proposal
I propose that Parazoa be undeleted. Parazoa provides a valuable reference to a classification that once still existed, but is generally no longer used. I got to a redirect from a link from Sponge - Systematics and evolutionary history. Before the article was deleted someone put the message - Parazoa is now virtually synonymous to Porifera on it before deleting. This is not true.

Consider the following article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermes_in_the_10th_edition_of_Systema_Naturae

Is this article totally worthless? I say no. Maybe a disclaimer should be put on the article saying that this classification is generally not used. But it does not deserve to be deleted to a redirect. 71.56.155.242 (talk) 20:48, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Ctenaphora basal /epitheliozoa/Eumetazoa/Parazoa
The latest research  suggests ctenophora are the basalmost animals, actually with "full" support, as opposed to, which is substantially less resolved, especially in the surrounding clades. Of course this has been a discussion since the Ryan et al(2013) paper, but it really seems like ctenophora is basal. Feel free do discuss.

This leaves us with the naming of the Porifera + Parahoxozoa clade. The closest thing to this clade I know of is parazoa. Before ctenophora basal, it was already realized that the higher animals emerged within Parazoa. With this knowledge, in Cladistics you can either take the stance of rejecting parazoa as a valid clade or you can include the emerged clade (dramatically increasing the scope). This is a normal process when groups turn out to be paraphyletic stem groups. For lack of a better available name, the last option can be taken. Before ctenophora basal, including the emerged clade would have resulted in parazoa as synonymous with metazoa, rendering parazoa obsolete or superfluous. However, after ctenophora this is not the case anymore. In parazoa is used as name for the basal clade, and recognise that the higher animals did emerge in them, but they don't specifically include the higher animals in Parazoa.

Also eumetazoa, now without ctenophora, which originally did not include placozoa, can be used closer to its original meaning, and become equivalent to the planulozoa rather than e.g. the Parahoxozoa/Epitheliozoa.

The Epitheliozoa hypotheses and Eumetazoa hypotheses (see placozoa) both more or less hold true, as long as ctenophora is removed from the discussion there.

Jmv2009 (talk) 12:27, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Redefining Parazoa?
While some of the points and citations listed are useful information for an article about animal evolution, there doesn't seem to be any literature supporting redefining Parazoa as a clade including sponges and eumetazoans. The Miller et al. paper from 2000 cited din this article doesn't seem to use the word Parazoa at all. Recent papers that use the name Parazoa (the term is fairly rare) mostly apply it to sponges alone or to sponges and placozoans. Would this not make this proposed redefinition "original research"? A new name may be needed for this clade, but an encyclopedia doesn't seem like the best place to introduce it. Cheers, Cephal-odd (talk) 02:46, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Added "This is not currently considered, and parazoa is rather considered invalid. " Jmv2009 (talk) 03:07, 3 November 2018 (UTC)