Fresh-water planarias and a marine planaria are relatively dissimilar in the 5S rRNA sequences.

The nucleotide sequences from fresh-water Dugesia japonica and marine Planocera reticulata have been determined. The similarity between these two species is only 69%. The Planocera sequence reveals nearly 80% similarity (72-81%) to the sequences of multicellular animals, while the Dugesia sequences are considerably different from them (66-73%).