Invertebrate
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Introduction
"Invertebrates" - or animals lacking a backbone (sponges, jellyfish, molluscs, insects, starfish, etc etc) - are a generic category that includes all Metazoa, or even all Metazoa plus several unicellular eukaryote groups (which makes it a polyphyletic grouping), except for the Vertebrata. The vertebrates are actually just one derived clade of Metazoa among many, so the distinction between invertebrates and vertebrates is really a chauvanistic and anthropocentric one, which is still found in the scientific literature (e.g. invertebrate and vertebrate paleontology), but is no longer used in current taxonomy.
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