Histology versus phylogeny: Viewing plant embryogenesis from an evo-devo perspective

The goal of evolutionary developmental (evo-devo) biology compares inter-organism developmental processes to infer ancestral relationships and evolutionary adaptations. Frameworks to address macroevolutionary traits such as plant embryogenesis commonly involve two complementary approaches. Historically, focus has been placed on comparative morphology and histology, but more recently, accumulating genome data from diverse taxa have elicited the construction of molecular phylogenies, which aid the identification of gene homologies and orthologies that have been adaptive and that underlie differences in form. Distinguishing between ancestral or derived traits in phyletic or cladistic-driven approaches is challenging, but relates to the broader applicability of existing developmental models such as Arabidopsis thaliana.