EvoDevo 10th Anniversary

Message from the Chief Editors

Greetings! 

At this 10-year anniversary of the launch of EvoDevo, we are thrilled and honored to take over the reins from Mark and Max. Broadly, Evolutionary Developmental Biology seeks to understand how changes in development drive major transitions and innovation in organismal evolution. Rooted in comparative developmental biology and integrating the principles and methods of many subdisciplines of biology along the way, “Evo-Devo” is now an established field. 

The genome sequencing revolution has delivered its promise. It has enabled us to re-explore many taxa that were relegated to the obscure for many decades. It has given us robust phylogenetic frameworks to generate hypotheses and inferences about evolution of traits at both micro- and macro-evolutionary timescales. Genomes, transcriptomes, and soon proteomes can be studied with single-cell resolution. This has given us loads of loci to investigate as causal agents for development and evolution.

Evo-Devo is now being powered by transformative new technology for studying gene function, such as CRISPR-Cas9 based genome-editing. New tools have also emerged in microscopy that allow more detailed investigations of embryos – Light-Sheet and Focused-Ion-Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy bridge the subcellular dimension with molecular studies in embryonic time lapse recordings. 

Thus, in 2020, Evo-Devo is well-positioned to broaden both the types of questions our field asks as well as the organisms we study. Important insights in Evo-Devo can come from varied sources. We want to publish work ranging from investigations and comparisons (at molecular, genetic, and cellular levels) of the blueprints of anything from flowers to axial skeletons, to studies of new research organisms that hold the promise of evolutionary insight, to phylogenetic reconstructions that impact comparative work, to studies of changes between closely related species or within populations, and beyond.

We would love to have EvoDevo serve our community as a focal point for scientific discourse, a place where our work on evolutionary developmental biology finds an audience that specifically cares about developmental studies with evolutionary implications, as opposed to solely developmental mechanisms or only evolutionary processes. 

We are open to new formats for publishing your Open Access work with us, and we encourage the use of preprint servers. We will increase our activity via social media to make your work more visible and accessible to the community.

You will soon hear more from us and we hope to hear back from you. 

Looking forward to seeing your science,

Mansi and Andi