Foreword, Peter W.H. Holland
Introduction, Maximilian J. Telford & D. Timothy J. Littlewood
I. Origins of animals
1. The earliest fossil record of the animals and its significance, Graham E. Budd
2. The Ediacaran emergence of bilaterians: congruence between the genetic and the geologic fossil records, Kevin J. Peterson, James A. Cotton, James G. Gehling & Davide Pisani
3. Genomic, phylogenetic, and cell biological insights into metazoan origins, Scott A. Nichols, Mark, J. Dayel & Nicole King
4. The mouth, the anus and the blastopore - open questions about questionable openings, Andreas Hejnol & Mark Q. Martindale
II. The Bilateria
5. Metazoan body plan origins: the larval revolution, Rudolf A. Raff
6. Assembling the spiralian tree of life, Gonzalo Giribet, Casey W. Dunn, Gregory D. Edgecombe, Andreas Hejnol, Mark Q. Martindale & Greg W. Rouse
7. The evolution of nervous system centralisation, Detlev Arendt, Alexandru S. Denes, Gáspár Jékely & Kristin Tessmar-Raible
8. The origins and evolution of the Ecdysozoa, Maximilian J. Telford, Sarah J. Bourlat, Andrew Economou, Daniel Papillon & Omar Rota-Stabelli
9. Deciphering deuterostome phylogeny: molecular, morphological and palaeontological perspectives, Andrew B. Smith & Billie J. Swalla
10. Molecular genetic insights into deuterostome evolution from the direct-developing hemichordate Saccoglossus kowalevskii, Christopher J. Lowe
III. Themes and Perspectives
11. Invertebrate Problematica: kinds, causes, and solutions, Ronald A. Jenner & D. Timothy J. Littlewood
12. Improvement of molecular phylogenetic inference and the phylogeny of Bilateria, Nicolas Lartillot & Hervé Philippe
13. Beyond linear sequence comparisons: the use of genome-level characters for phylogenetic reconstruction, Jeffrey L. Boore & Susan I. Fuerstenberg
14. The animal in the genome: comparative genomics and evolution, Richard R. Copley
15. MicroRNAs and metazoan phylogeny: big trees from little genes, Erik A. Sperling & Kevin J. Peterson
16. The evolution of developmental gene networks: lessons from comparative studies on holometabolous insects, Andrew D. Peel
17. Conserved developmental processes and the evolution of novel traits: wounds, embryos, veins, and butterfly eyespots, Patrícia Beldade & Suzanne V. Saenko