What is a good website to distinguish if a animal is a invertebrate or a chordate?

Question

That also gives a distinguishing characteristic of the animal.

Answer 1

One website that I like is called Tree of Life
http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html

it is a realitively straight forward scheme that allows you to pick the picture of the goup and then to pick subdivisions below that to classify your organism down to the Class level.

and many other resources can be found from:
http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/courses.hp/zool250/links.htm



To distinguish a chordate it must have the following 4 traits embryologically:
- a notocord
- a dorsal hollow nerve cord
- pharyngeal gill slits
- post-anal tail

To be a vertebrate it must have:
- spinal column or backbone

Where vertebrates are a subdivision of chordates.

Answer 2

Be careful. Not all chordates are vertebrates, You are using two very different measures.

Vertebrates (and invertebrates) are in possession of a spinal COLUMN the actual spine itself, the bones.

Chordates possess a spinal nerve, at some time in their life, a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a muscular tail extending past the anus. Some Invertebrates are Chordates. Some Chordates are NOT vertebrates, so be careful when uising two different but overlapping qualifiers.

Answer 3

wikipedia

Answer 4

This one. Just ask and someone will answer.