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Limpets break Dollo's Law.

Mark Pagel1

  • 1School of Animal and Microbial Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK, RG6 6AJ. m.pagel@reading.ac.uk

Trends in Ecology & Evolution
|May 17, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Coiled shells re-evolved in Calyptraeidae limpets, challenging Dollo's Law. This evolutionary reversal suggests developmental plasticity can restore complex traits lost millions of years ago.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Molecular Phylogenetics
  • Developmental Biology

Background:

  • Dollo's Law posits that complex traits, once lost, are not reacquired.
  • The Calyptraeidae family of limpets exhibits diverse shell morphologies, including coiled and uncoiled forms.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the evolutionary history of shell coiling in Calyptraeidae using molecular phylogenetics.
  • To determine if the coiled shell state has re-evolved independently within this family.

Main Methods:

  • Phylogenetic analysis of molecular data from Calyptraeidae species.
  • Reconstruction of ancestral states for shell morphology.

Main Results:

  • Molecular phylogeny indicates independent re-evolution of coiled shells at least once in Calyptraeidae.

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  • This finding violates Dollo's Law, as uncoiled shells were the recent ancestral state for 20-100 million years.

    • Conclusions:

    • The re-evolution of complex traits like coiled shells is possible, challenging long-held evolutionary principles.
    • Developmental mechanisms, such as prolonged larval gene expression, may facilitate the reacquisition of lost ancestral traits.