Response to Comment on "The lower Cambrian lobopodian <i>Cardiodictyon</i> resolves the origin of euarthropod brains".

Abstract

Budd <i>et al</i>. challenge the identity of neural traces reported for the Cambrian lobopodian <i>Cardiodictyon catenulum.</i> Their argumentation is unsupported, as are objections with reference to living Onychophora that misinterpret established genomic, genetic, developmental, and neuroanatomical evidence. Instead, phylogenetic data corroborate the finding that the ancestral panarthropod head and brain is unsegmented, as in <i>C. catenulum</i>.