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The independent origin and evolution of leaves as small, simple microphylls or larger, more complex megaphylls in plants has shaped and influenced the natural composition of the environment. Significant contri...
Two issues relating to the translocation of anterior Hox genes in echinoderms to the 5’ end of the Hox cluster are discussed: i) that developmental changes associated with fixation to the substratum have led to a...
Seahorses are well known for their highly derived head shape, prehensile tail and armoured body. They belong to the family of teleosts known as Syngnathidae, which also includes the pipefishes, pipehorses and ...
Hox genes are master regulatory genes that specify positional identities during axial development in animals. Discoveries regarding their concerted expression patterns have commanded intense interest due to th...
Developmental biology, as all experimental science, is empowered by technological advances. The availability of genetic tools in some species - designated as model organisms - has driven their use as major pla...
Lepidium sisymbrioides, a polyploid New Zealand endemic, is the sole dioecious species in Brassicaceae and therefore the closest dioecious relative of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The attractiveness of d...
Among the Lophotrochozoa, cephalopods possess the highest degree of central nervous system (CNS) centralization and complexity. Although the anatomy of the developing cephalopod CNS has been investigated, the ...
Understanding the molecular basis of craniofacial variation can provide insights into key developmental mechanisms of adaptive changes and their role in trophic divergence and speciation. Arctic charr (Salvelinus...
Metazoan digestive systems develop from derivatives of ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm, and vary in the relative contribution of each germ layer across taxa and between gut regions. In a small number of well-s...
Insect embryonic dorso-ventral patterning depends greatly on two pathways: the Toll pathway and the Bone Morphogenetic Protein pathway. While the relative contribution of each pathway has been investigated in ...
Proseriates (Proseriata, Platyhelminthes) are free-living, mostly marine, flatworms measuring at most a few millimetres. In common with many flatworms, they are known to be capable of regeneration; however, fe...
Although chordates descend from a segmented ancestor, the evolution of head segmentation has been very controversial for over 150 years. Chordates generally possess a segmented pharynx, but even though anatomi...
Enhanced food-finding efficiency is an obvious adaptive response to cave environments. Here, we have compared the food-finding abilities of Astyanax surface fish and blind cavefish young larvae in their first mon...
Multicellularity provides organisms with opportunities for cell-type specialization, but requires novel mechanisms to position correct proportions of different cell types throughout the organism. Dictyostelid ...
Mammals exhibit a remarkable variety of phenotypes and comparative studies using novel model species are needed to uncover the evolutionary developmental mechanisms generating this diversity. Here, we undertak...
Annual killifishes inhabit temporary ponds and their embryos survive the dry season encased in the mud by entering diapause, a process that arrests embryonic development during hostile conditions. Annual killi...
During development, juvenile nematodes undergo four molts. Although the number of molts appears to be constant within the Nematoda, the timing of the first molt can occur either before or after hatching. A pre...
Cellular differentiation is a critical process during development of multicellular animals that must be tightly controlled in order to avoid precocious differentiation or failed generation of differentiated ce...
The Hes superfamily or Hes/Hey-related genes encompass a variety of metazoan-specific bHLH genes, with somewhat fuzzy phylogenetic relationships. Hes superfamily members are involved in a variety of major develop...
The teleost Astyanax mexicanus is a single species consisting of eyed surface-dwelling (surface fish) and blind cave-dwelling (cavefish) morphs. Cavefish eyes are lost through apoptosis of the lens, which in turn...
Disentangling evolutionary shifts in developmental timing (heterochony) is dependent upon accurate estimates of ancestral patterns. However, many classic assessments of heterochronic patterns predate robust ph...
The primary hormone of the vertebrate pineal gland, melatonin, has been identified broadly throughout the eukaryotes. While the role for melatonin in cyclic behavior via interactions with the circadian clock h...
A particularly critical event in avian evolution was the transition from long- to short-tailed birds. Primitive bird tails underwent significant alteration, most notably reduction of the number of caudal verte...
Segmentation is a feature of the body plans of a number of diverse animal groupings, including the annelids, arthropods and chordates. However, it has been unclear whether or not these different manifestations...
The Pax-Six-Eya-Dach network (PSEDN) is involved in a variety of developmental processes, including well documented roles in determination of sensory organs and morphogenesis in bilaterian animals. Expression of ...
The Hox gene cluster ranks among the greatest of biological discoveries of the past 30 years. Morphogenetic patterning genes are remarkable for the systems they regulate during major ontogenetic events, and fo...
The canals of the mechanosensory lateral line system are components of the dermatocranium, and demonstrate phenotypic variation in bony fishes. Widened lateral line canals evolved convergently in a limited num...
The bHLH-PAS transcription factors are found in both protostomes and deuterostomes. They are involved in many developmental and physiological processes, including regional differentiation of the central nervou...
Convergent evolution, the repeated evolution of similar phenotypes in independent lineages, provides natural replicates to study mechanisms of evolution. Cases of convergent evolution might have the same under...
Germline specification in some animals is driven by the maternally inherited germ plasm during early embryogenesis (inheritance mode), whereas in others it is induced by signals from neighboring cells in mid o...
The Fox gene family is a large family of transcription factors that arose early in organismal evolution dating back to at least the common ancestor of metazoans and fungi. They are key components of many gene ...
Diapause is a developmental arrest present in annual killifish, whose eggs are able to survive long periods of desiccation when the temporary ponds they inhabit dry up. Diapause can occur in three different de...
The Sox genes, a family of transcription factors characterized by the presence of a high mobility group (HMG) box domain, are among the central groups of developmental regulators in the animal kingdom. They are i...
The Onychophora are a probable sister group to Arthropoda, one of the most intensively studied animal phyla from a developmental perspective. Pioneering work on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and subsequen...
For animal cells, ciliation and mitosis appear to be mutually exclusive. While uniciliated cells can resorb their cilium to undergo mitosis, multiciliated cells apparently can never divide again. Nevertheless,...
Crustaceans of the genus Daphnia are one of the oldest model organisms in ecotoxicology, ecology and evolutionary biology. The publication of the Daphnia pulex genome has facilitated the development of genetic to...
A key early step in embryogenesis is the establishment of the major body axes; the dorsal-ventral (DV) and anterior-posterior (AP) axes. Determination of these axes in some insects requires the function of dif...
It is believed that in tapeworms a separate population of undifferentiated cells, the germinative cells, is the only source of cell proliferation throughout the life cycle (similar to the neoblasts of free liv...
Polyclad flatworms offer an excellent system with which to explore the evolution of larval structures and the ecological and developmental mechanisms driving flatworm and marine invertebrate life history evolu...
Heterochronic shifts during ontogeny can result in adaptively important innovations and might be initiated by simple developmental switches. Understanding the nature of these developmental events can provide i...
While the ecological factors that drive phenotypic radiations are often well understood, less is known about the generative mechanisms that cause the emergence and subsequent diversification of novel features. He...
Haemocyanin is the respiratory protein of most of the Mollusca. In cephalopods and gastropods at least two distinct isoforms are differentially expressed. However, their physiological purpose is unknown. For t...
Adaptation to a new environment can be facilitated by co-inheritance of a suite of phenotypes that are all advantageous in the new habitat. Although experimental evidence demonstrates that multiple phenotypes ...
An important question in experimental embryology is to understand how the developmental potential responsible for the generation of distinct cell types is spatially segregated over developmental time. Classica...
The monophyly of Mandibulata - the division of arthropods uniting pancrustaceans and myriapods - is consistent with several morphological characters, such as the presence of sensory appendages called antennae ...
In Drosophila and many other insects, the Hox genes Ultrabithorax (Ubx) and abdominal-A (abd-A) suppress limb formation on most or all segments of the abdomen. However, a number of basal hexapod lineages retain m...
Comparative studies of developmental processes are one of the main approaches to evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Over recent years, there has been a shift of focus from the comparative study of ...
Animals have been described as segmented for more than 2,000 years, yet a precise definition of segmentation remains elusive. Here we give the history of the definition of segmentation, followed by a discussio...
Specification of the germ line is an essential event during the embryonic development of sexually reproducing animals, as germ line cells are uniquely capable of giving rise to the next generation. Animal germ...
In sea urchin larvae the circumesophageal fibers form a prominent muscle system of mesodermal origin. Although the morphology and later development of this muscle system has been well-described, little is know...
EvoDevo