Arthropod relationships

Arthropods - insects, crustaceans, myriapods and arachnids - are the most speciose of all animal groups, and have been so for hundreds of millions of years.

Their importance in every eco-system - terrestial and marine - is not in question, yet little has been agreed about how they achieve their pre-eminence.

This text presents papers from a symposium on arthropology held at the Natural History Museum on 17-19 April 1996.

It synthesizes views about arthropod phylogeny and many of the papers presented include cladistic analyses based upon character matrices - both morphological and molecular.