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Hemiptera is a large clade of insects understudied in terms of developmental biology. Halyomorpha halys, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB, referred to throughout as H. halys), is an invasive hemipteran pest o...
Pax genes are a family of conserved transcription factors that regulate many aspects of developmental morphogenesis, notably the development of ectodermal sensory structures including ...
How nervous systems evolved remains an unresolved question. Previous studies in vertebrates and arthropods revealed that homologous genes regulate important neurogenic processes such as cell proliferation and ...
The evolutionary emergence and diversification of the chordates appear to involve dramatic changes in organ morphogenesis along the left/right axis. However, the ancestral chordate mechanism for establishing l...
Analyzing close species with diverse developmental modes is instrumental for investigating the evolutionary significance of physiological, anatomical and behavioral features at a molecular level. Many examples...
Axon guidance receptors of the Roundabout (Robo) family regulate a number of axon guidance outcomes in bilaterian animals in addition to their canonical role in Slit-dependent midline repulsion. In the fruit fly
Cardiac outflow tract patterning and cell contribution are studied using an evo-devo approach to reveal insight into the development of aorto-pulmonary septation.
Vertebrate epithelial appendages constitute a diverse group of organs that includes integumentary structures such as reptilian scales, avian feathers and mammalian hair. Recent studies have provided new eviden...
Hydroidfest 2016 took place on September 23–25 at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory in Bodega Bay, CA. The meeting brought together cnidarian researchers, with an emphasis on those studying hydrozoans, fro...
Genotype and environment can interact during development to produce novel adaptive traits that support life in extreme conditions. The development of the annual killifish Austrofundulus limnaeus is unique among v...
SPATULA (SPT) and ALCATRAZ (ALC) are recent paralogs that belong to the large bHLH transcription factor family. Orthologs of these genes have been found in all core eudicots, whereas p...
Amphioxus larvae have a midbrain-level locomotory control center whose overall organization is known from serial TEM reconstructions. How it functions has been a puzzle, owing to uncertainty as to the transmit...
Passiflora (passionflowers) makes an excellent model for studying plant evolutionary development. They are mostly perennial climbers that display axillary tendrils, which are believed ...
The African rice Oryza glaberrima was domesticated from its wild relative Oryza barthii about 3000 years ago. During the domestication process, panicle complexity changed from a panicle with low complexity in O....
The arthropod head problem has troubled scientists for more than a century. The segmental composition of the arthropod head, homology of its appendages, and especially the nature of the most anterior region of...
The forelimb of the flightless emu is a vestigial structure, with greatly reduced wing elements and digit loss. To explore the molecular and cellular mechanisms associated with the evolution of vestigial wings...
Kinorhynchs are ecdysozoan animals with a phylogenetic position close to priapulids and loriciferans. To understand the nature of segmentation within Kinorhyncha and to infer a probable ancestry of segmentatio...
Many insects host their obligate, maternally transmitted symbiotic bacteria in specialized cells called bacteriocytes. One of the best-studied insect nutritional endosymbioses is that of the aphid and its endo...
Basic Helix-Loop-Helix (bHLH) genes encode a large family of eukaryotic transcription factors, categorized into six high-order groups: pan-eukaryotic group B involved in regulation of cell cycle, metabolism, a...
Gonads are specialized gamete-producing structures that, despite their functional importance, are generated by diverse mechanisms across groups of animals and can be among the most plastic organs of the body. ...
Genomic analysis has upended chordate phylogeny, placing the tunicates as the sister group to the vertebrates. This taxonomic rearrangement raises questions about the emergence of a tunicate/vertebrate ancestor.
Annelida is a morphologically diverse animal group that exhibits a remarkable variety in nervous system architecture (e.g., number and location of longitudinal cords, architecture of the brain). Despite this h...
Here we present a report on Ctenopalooza: A meeting of ctenophorologists held at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine, FL, USA, on March 14–15, 2016. In this report, we provide a summa...
Dbx1 is a homeodomain transcription factor involved in neuronal fate specification belonging to a widely conserved family among bilaterians. In mammals, Dbx1 was proposed to act as a transcriptional repressor ...
An essential developmental pathway in sexually reproducing animals is the specification of germ cells and the differentiation of mature gametes, sperm and oocytes. The “germline” genes vasa, nanos and piwi are...
Bocconia and Macleaya are the only genera of the poppy family (Papaveraceae) lacking petals; however, the developmental and genetic processes underlying such evolutionary shift have no...
Organisms develop and evolve in a modular fashion, but how individual modules interact with the environment remains poorly understood. Phenotypically plastic traits are often under selection, and studies are n...
The evolution of animal segmentation is a major research focus within the field of evolutionary–developmental biology. Most studied segmented animals generate their segments in a repetitive, anterior-to-poster...
The microvillus is a versatile organelle that serves important functions in disparate animal cell types. However, from a molecular perspective, the microvillus has been well studied in only a few, predominantl...
New branches within the embryonic chicken lung form via apical constriction, in which epithelial cells in the primary bronchus become trapezoidal in shape. These branches form at precise locations along the pr...
The ancestral arthropod is believed to have had a clustered arrangement of ten Hox genes. Within arthropods, Hox gene mutations result in transformation of segment identities. Despite the fact that variation i...
Platynereis and other polychaete annelids with homonomous segmentation are regarded to closely resemble ancestral forms of bilateria. The head region comprises the prostomium, the peri...
Germ cells are specified during early development and are responsible for generating gametes in the adult. After germ cells are specified, they typically migrate to a particular niche in the organism where the...
Shifts in floral form across angiosperms, particularly from radially symmetrical to bilaterally symmetrical flowers, are often associated with shifts in speciation rates and changes in pollination syndrome. Gr...
Freshwater planarians are well known for their regenerative abilities. Less well known is how planarians maintain spatial patterning in long-lived adult animals or how they re-pattern tissues during regenerat...
The aquiferous body plan of poriferans revolves around internal chambers comprised of choanocytes, a cell type structurally similar to choanoflagellates. These choanocyte chambers perform a range of physiologi...
The Neotropical frog genera Ceratophrys, Chacophrys and Lepidobatrachus form the monophyletic family Ceratophryidae. Although in- and out-group relationships are not fully resolved, the monophyly of the three ge...
The Hippo pathway regulates growth rate and organ size in fly and mouse, notably through control of cell proliferation. Molecular interactions at the heart of this pathway are known to have originated in the u...
Cichlid fishes from the Rift Lakes of East Africa have undergone the most spectacular adaptive radiations in vertebrate history. Eco-morphological adaptations in lakes Victoria, Malawi and Tanganyika have resu...
The evolutionary mechanisms involved in shaping complex gene regulatory networks (GRN) that encode for morphologically similar structures in distantly related animals remain elusive. In this context, echinoder...
Obligate intracellular symbionts of insects are metabolically and developmentally integrated with their hosts. Typically, reproduction fails in many insect nutritional endosymbioses when host insects are cured...
It has been hypothesized that the ParaHox gene Gsx patterned the foregut of the last common bilaterian ancestor. This notion was corroborated by Gsx expression in three out of four lophotrochozoan species, severa...
Development of cerebral eyes is generally based on fine-tuned networks and closely intertwined with the formation of brain and head. Consistently and best studied in insects and vertebrates, many signaling pat...
Fish correspond to the most diversified phylum among vertebrates with a large variety of species. Even if general features are distinguishable during the embryogenesis, several differences in term of timing, o...
We analyze the interdisciplinary state of evolutionary developmental biology based on the diversity of themes, taxa, levels of organization and scientists at the first meeting of the Pan-American Society for E...
Wnt signaling pathways are highly conserved signal transduction pathways important for axis formation, cell fate specification, and organogenesis throughout metazoan development. Within the various Wnt pathway...
The origin of discrete novelties remains unclear. Some authors suggest that qualitative phenotypic changes may result from the reorganization of preexisting phenotypic traits during development (i.e., developm...
The variation in mandibular morphology of mammals reflects specialisations for different diets. Omnivorous and carnivorous mammals posses large mandibular coronoid processes, while herbivorous mammals have pro...
The evolution and development of sexual dimorphism illuminates a central question in biology: How do similar genomes produce different phenotypes? In an XX/XO system especially the state of a sexually dimorphi...
The longstanding canonical model of spider gastrulation posits that cell internalization occurs only at a unitary central blastopore; and that the cumulus (dorsal organizer) arises from within the early deep l...
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