Primates and eukaryotes would be good.
The short version before I get a chance to write more posts:
Primates appear to be an interestingly potentiated lineage, prone to getting smart when they get large, due to differences in brain development established 50+ megayears ago that make their brains much more impressive per unit volume than most larger mammals. The great apes other than humans actually seem to run into energetic limits to feeding their brains and have smaller brains than you'd expect for a primate of their size, while humans are right on the generic primate trendline. Birds are an...
After many tribulations, my astrobiology bloggery is back up and running using Wordpress rather than Blogger because Blogger is completely unusable these days. I've taken the opportunity of the move to make better graphs for my old posts.
"The Solar System: Why Earth?"
https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/the-solar-system-why-earth/
Here, I try to look at our own solar system and what the presence of only ONE known biosphere, here on Earth, tells us about life and perhaps more importantly what it does not. In particular, I explore what aspects of Earth make it special and I make the distinction between a big biosphere here on Earth that has utterly rebuilt the geochemistry and a smaller biosphere living off smaller amounts of energy that we probably would never notice elsewhere in our own solar system given the evidence at hand.
Commentary appreciated.
Previous works:
Space and Time, Part I
https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/space-and-time-part-i
Space and Time, Part II
https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/space-and-time-part-ii