Panarthropoda

Panarthropoda is a proposed animal clade containing the extant phyla Arthropoda, Tardigrada (water bears) and Onychophora (velvet worms).

[21] There are three competing hyphotheses for the interrelationship between the extant panarthropod phyla, each known as Tactopoda (Arthropoda+Tardigrada), Antennopoda (Arthropoda+Onychophora), and the sister relationship between Onychophora and Tardigrada (Lobopodia sensu Smith & Goldstein 2017).

[25] Antennopodia united by the presence of specialized head appendages and deutocerebrum (additional second section of the brain), but subsequent anatomical studies suggest these features were convergently evolved between onychophoran and arthropod lineages.

[15][26] Onychophorans and tardigrades shared some lobopodian traits (e.g. soft cuticle, lobopodous appendages and peripheral nerve roots), but these were generally considered to be plesiomorphies traced back to the last common ancestor of Panarthropoda or Ecdysozoa.

[4][5][27][6] While most phylogenomic analyses support the monophyly of Panarthropoda, the results of interrelationship between the three phyla are less correlated - some of them inconsistently placing Tardigrada within Arthropoda,[10] while the others mostly recovering either Antennopoda or Onychophora+Tardigrada.