Obazoa (Brown et al., 2013)
is a proposed sister
clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...
of
Amoebozoa (which together form
Amorphea
Amorphea are members of a taxonomic supergroup that includes the basal Amoebozoa and Obazoa. That latter contains the Opisthokonta, which includes the Fungi, Animals and the Choanomonada, or Choanoflagellates. The taxonomic affinities of the ...
). Obazoa is composed of
Breviatea,
Apusomonadida and
Opisthokonta. The term Obazoa is based on the OBA
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
for Opisthokonta, Breviatea, and Apusomonadida.
Determining the placement of Breviatea and Apusomonadida and their properties is of interest for the development of the opisthokonts in which the main lineages of
animal
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...
s and
fungi
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately fr ...
emerged.
The relationships among opisthokonts, breviates and apusomonads are not conclusively resolved (as of 2018), though Breviatea is usually inferred to be the most basal of the three lineages.
Ribosomal RNA phylogenies do not usually recover Obazoa as a clade (see for example:
), probably reflecting their stemming from a very ancient common ancestor, and little
phylogenetic signal
Phylogenetic signal is an evolutionary and ecological term, that describes the tendency or the pattern of related biological species to resemble each other more than any other species that is randomly picked from the same phylogenetic tree.
Char ...
remains in datasets consisting of one or a few genes.
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q22087764
Amorphea unranked clades