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Paths less traveled: evo-devo approaches to investigating animal morphological evolution
Ricardo Mallarino1, Arhat Abzhanov
1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. abzhanov@fas.harvard.edu
Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology
|October 13, 2012
Summary
Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offers a powerful framework for understanding animal form diversity. By integrating morphometrics, mechanism identification, and functional experiments, evo-devo explains developmental underpinnings of morphological evolution across species.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Developmental biology
- Genomics
Background:
- Multicellular animals exhibit vast morphological diversity crucial for survival.
- Understanding the evolutionary origins of these diverse forms is a key challenge in modern biology.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the structure of successful evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) studies.
- To illustrate how multifarious evo-devo approaches explain developmental mechanisms for morphological evolution.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of successful evo-devo studies.
- Integration of phylogenetics, genomics, morphometrics, cell biology, and developmental biology.
- Case studies examining morphometrics, candidate mechanism identification, and functional experiments.
Main Results:
- Successful evo-devo studies integrate three interdependent components: morphometrics, candidate mechanism identification, and functional experiments.
- This integrated approach explains developmental mechanisms driving morphological evolution.
Conclusions:
- Evolutionary developmental biology provides an effective framework for studying morphological diversity.
- The combination of diverse methodologies within evo-devo is essential for understanding the evolution of animal forms across phylogenetic scales.
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