Figure 3.

Phylogeny of eubacteria and multicellular kingdoms, with branch lengths arbitrary. The averages for the genetic distances given in table 3 of ref. 17 are 1.50 ± 0.50 between bacteria and animals, which is not greater than 1.40 ± 0.62 between plant and animals or 1.68 ± 0.81 between yeast/mold (protist for one gene) and animals. Assuming that the lineage change is half the genetic distance between taxa, the value of b is about 0, even though it encompasses the evolution from prokaryote to eukaryote and from protist to multicellularity.