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Opsins are the primary proteins responsible for light detection in animals. Cnidarians (jellyfish, sea anemones, corals) have diverse visual systems that have evolved in parallel with bilaterians (squid, flies...
The second annual Cnidarian Model Systems Meeting, aka “Cnidofest”, took place in Davis, California from 7 to 10th of September, 2022. The meeting brought together scientists using cnidarians to study molecula...
In social insects, interactions among colony members trigger caste differentiation with morphological modifications. In termite caste differentiation, caste-specific morphologies (such as mandibles in soldiers...
The Tunicata or Urochordata is the only animal group with the ability to synthesize cellulose directly and cellulose is a component of the tunic that covers the entire tunicate body. The genome of Ciona intestina...
The developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) of two sea urchin species, Lytechinus variegatus (Lv) and Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Sp), have remained remarkably similar despite about 50 million years sin...
Transcriptomic methods can be used to elucidate genes and pathways responsible for phenotypic differences between populations. Asellus aquaticus is a freshwater isopod crustacean with surface- and cave-dwelling e...
The vertebrate head skeleton has evolved a myriad of forms since their divergence from invertebrate chordates. The connection between novel gene expression and cell types is therefore of importance in this pro...
In the course of animal developmental processes, various tissues are differentiated through complex interactions within the gene regulatory network. As a general concept, differentiation has been considered to...
Schizocardium karankawa sp. nov. has been collected from subtidal muds of the Laguna Madre, Texas, and the Mississippi coast, Gulf of Mexico. The Texas population is reproductive from early February to mid-April....
The polyplacophoran mollusks (chitons) possess serially arranged shell plates. This feature is unique among mollusks and believed to be essential to explore the evolution of mollusks as well as their shells. P...
Phenotypic evolution is mainly explained by selection for phenotypic variation arising from factors including mutation and environmental noise. Recent theoretical and experimental studies have suggested that p...
Plant domestication is a remarkable example of rapid phenotypic transformation of polygenic traits, such as organ size. Evidence from a handful of study cases suggests this transformation is due to gene regula...
In Metazoa, the germline represents the cell lineage devoted to the transmission of genetic heredity across generations. Its functions intuitively evoke the crucial roles that it plays in organism development ...
Cichlid fishes are a very diverse and species-rich family of teleost fishes that inhabit lakes and rivers of India, Africa, and South and Central America. Research has largely focused on East African cichlids ...
Pseudanthia are multiflowered units that resemble single flowers, frequently by association with pseudocorollas formed by enlarged peripheral florets (ray flowers). Such resemblance is not only superficial, be...
In Dictyostelium discoideum (Ddis), adenylate cyclase A (ACA) critically generates the cAMP oscillations that coordinate aggregation and morphogenesis. Unlike group 4 species like Ddis, other groups do not use ex...
Brachiopods and molluscs are lophotrochozoans with hard external shells which are often believed to have evolved convergently. While palaeontological data indicate that both groups are descended from biominera...
Water fleas of the genus Daphnia have been a model system for hundreds of years and is among the best studied ecological model organisms to date. Daphnia are planktonic crustaceans with a cyclic parthenogenetic l...
Hox genes are key regulators of appendage development in the insect body plan. The body plan of mayfly (Ephemeroptera) nymphs differs due to the presence of abdominal appendages called gills. Despite mayflies’...
The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum has emerged as an important insect model system for a variety of topics. With respect to studying gene function, it is second only to the vinegar fly D. melanogaster. The ...
There are a wide range of developmental strategies in animal phyla, but most insights into adult body plan formation come from direct-developing species. For indirect-developing species, there are distinct lar...
Two genes, Distal-less (Dll) and spalt (sal), are known to be involved in establishing nymphalid butterfly wing patterns. They function in several ways: in the differentiation of the eyespot’s central signalling ...
Phloem wedges furrowing the wood are one of the most notorious, widespread types of cambial variants in Angiosperms. Many lianas in Malpighiaceae show these variations in the arrangement of the secondary tissu...
Gnetales have a key phylogenetic position in the evolution of seed plants. Among the Gnetales, there is an extraordinary morphological diversity of seeds, the genus Ephedra, in particular, exhibits fleshy, coriac...
The Gymnotiformes, also known as the South American or Neotropical knifefishes, include the strongly electric Electrophorus electricus and many other weakly electric species. These fish possess specialised electr...
Fossils constitute the principal repository of data that allow for independent tests of hypotheses of biological evolution derived from observations of the extant biota. Traditionally, transformational series ...
Plant dispersal units, or diaspores, allow the colonization of new environments expanding geographic range and promoting gene flow. Two broad categories of diaspores found in seed plants are dry and fleshy, as...
The original article was published in EvoDevo 2022 13:1
CYCLOIDEA (CYC)-like transcription factors pattern floral symmetry in most angiosperms. In core eudicots, two duplications led to three clades of CYC-like genes: CYC1, CYC2, and CYC3, with orthologs of the CYC2 c...
Alternative patterns of secondary growth in stems of Nyctaginaceae is present in all growth habits of the family and have been known for a long time. However, the interpretation of types of cambial variants h...
An outstanding question in evolutionary biology is how genetic interactions defining novel traits evolve. They may evolve either by de novo assembly of previously non-interacting genes or by en bloc co-option of ...
The LEAFY (LFY) transcription factors are present in algae and across land plants. The available expression and functional data of these genes in embryophytes suggest that LFY genes control a plethora of processe...
Understanding the relationship between macroevolutionary diversity and variation in organism development is an important goal of evolutionary biology. Variation in the morphology of several plant and animal li...
The Correction to this article has been published in EvoDevo 2022 13:6
Botryllid ascidians are a group of marine invertebrate chordates that are colonial and grow by repeated rounds of asexual reproduction to form a colony of individual bodies, called zooids, linked by a common v...
The carpel is a fascinating structure that plays a critical role in flowering plant reproduction and contributed greatly to the evolutionary success and diversification of flowering plants. The remarkable feat...
The original article was published in EvoDevo 2011 2:11
The Wnt genes represent a large family of secreted glycoprotein ligands that date back to early animal evolution. Multiple duplication events generated a set of 13 Wnt families of which 12 are preserved in pro...
Despite the conserved pattern of the cell-fate map among spiralians, bivalves display several modified characteristics during their early development, including early specification of the D blastomere by the c...
The Nereid Platynereis dumerilii (Audouin and Milne Edwards (Annales des Sciences Naturelles 1:195–269, 1833) is a marine annelid that belongs to the Nereididae, a family of errant polychaete worms. The Nereid sh...
The insect neuroendocrine system acts in the regulation of physiology, development and growth. Molecular evolution of this system hence has the potential to allow for major biological differences between insec...
Pigmentation patterning systems are of great interest to understand how changes in developmental mechanisms can lead to a wide variety of patterns. These patterns are often conspicuous, but their origins remai...
In the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster, the homeodomain containing transcription factor Teashirt (Tsh) appears to specify trunk identity in concert with the function of the Hox genes. While in Drosophila ther...
Sexual-size dimorphism (SSD) is replete among animals, but while the selective pressures that drive the evolution of SSD have been well studied, the developmental mechanisms upon which these pressures act are ...
Annelids are a diverse group of segmented worms within Spiralia, whose embryos exhibit spiral cleavage and a variety of larval forms. While most modern embryological studies focus on species with unequal spira...
Vertebrate teeth exhibit a wide range of regenerative systems. Many species, including most mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, form replacement teeth at a histologically distinct location called the succession...
Understanding the molecular and cellular processes that underpin animal development are crucial for understanding the diversity of body plans found on the planet today. Because of their abundance in the fossil...
As social insects, ants represent extremely interaction-rich biological systems shaped by tightly integrated social structures and constant mutual exchange with a multitude of internal and external environment...
Venomous animals are a striking example of the convergent evolution of a complex trait. These animals have independently evolved an apparatus that synthesizes, stores, and secretes a mixture of toxic compounds...
Annual fishes of the genus Nothobranchius inhabit ephemeral habitats in Eastern and Southeastern Africa. Their life cycle is characterized by very rapid maturation, a posthatch lifespan of a few weeks to month...
The freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis has a long research history, but only relatively recently has it emerged as an attractive model organism to study molecular mechanisms in the areas of developmental biology ...
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