Only six kingdoms of life. | Article | H1 Connect

This paper complements that of Berney et al. {1}, demonstrating that the extensive claims to the existence of novel eukaryotic kingdoms made by two previous studies based on environmental 18S rRNA sequences (Dawson and Pace {2} and Stoeck and Epstein {3}) were wrong because they were relying on poor phylogenetic analyses, in particular mis-rooting of phylogenetic trees and long-branch artefact.

In fact, careful reanalysis of these "novel-kingdom" environmental sequences placed them in many cases in known groups, such as the gregarines (Apicomplexa).

This paper must be read by all those exploring protist diversity through environmental gene sequencing.