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The enigmatic wormlike parasite Buddenbrockia plumatellae has recently been shown to belong to the Myxozoa, which are now supported as a clade within Cnidaria. Most myxozoans are morphologically extremely simplif...
In the polychaete Platynereis, the primordial germ cells (PGCs) emerge from the vasa, piwi, and PL10 expressing mesodermal posterior growth zone (MPGZ) at the end of larval development, suggesting a post-embryoni...
Annelids and arthropods each possess a segmented body. Whether this similarity represents an evolutionary convergence or inheritance from a common segmented ancestor is the subject of ongoing investigation.
Flatworm embryology has attracted attention since the early beginnings of comparative evolutionary biology. Considered for a long time the most basal bilaterians, the Platyhelminthes (excluding Acoelomorpha) a...
Flower bilateral symmetry (zygomorphy) has evolved multiple times independently across angiosperms and is correlated with increased pollinator specialization and speciation rates. Functional and expression ana...
This paper is a short report on the 2012 Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting. Charleston, South Carolina, USA. 3-7 January 2012 (abstracts freely available at
Gene duplication and the subsequent divergence in function of the resulting paralogs via subfunctionalization and/or neofunctionalization is hypothesized to have played a major role in the evolution of plant f...
Larval features such as the apical organ, apical ciliary tuft, and ciliated bands often complicate the evaluation of hypotheses regarding the origin of the adult bilaterian nervous system. Understanding how ne...
Nervous systems are thought to be important to the evolutionary success and diversification of metazoans, yet little is known about the origin of simple nervous systems at the base of the animal tree. Recent d...
Parasitism is an important life history strategy in many metazoan taxa. This is particularly true of the Phylum Nematoda, in which parasitism has evolved independently at least nine times. The apparent ease wi...
Cytasters (cytoplasmic asters) are centriole-based nucleation centers of microtubule polymerization that are observable in large numbers in the cortical cytoplasm of the egg and zygote of bilaterian organisms....
A report on the meeting Comparative Genomics of Eukaryotic Microorganisms: understanding the complexity of diversity. Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain. October 15-20, 2011.
Here we provide the most comprehensive study to date on the cranial ossification sequence in Lipotyphla, the group which includes shrews, moles and hedgehogs. This unique group, which encapsulates diverse ecol...
RNAs for embryo patterning and for germ cell specification are localized to the vegetal cortex of the oocyte of Xenopus laevis. In oocytes of the direct developing frog Eleutherodactylus coqui, orthologous RNAs f...
Reptiles are largely under-represented in comparative genomics despite the fact that they are substantially more diverse in many respects than mammals. Given the high divergence of reptiles from classical mode...
Nematodes can be subdivided into basal Enoplea (clades 1 and 2) and more derived Chromadorea (clades 3 to 12). Embryogenesis of Caenorhabditis elegans (clade 9) has been analyzed in most detail. Their establishme...
As whole genome and transcriptome sequencing gets cheaper and faster, a great number of 'exotic' animal models are emerging, rapidly adding valuable data to the ever-expanding Evo-Devo field. All these new org...
The placenta is essential for supplying nutrients and gases to the developing mammalian young before birth. While all mammals have a functional placenta, only in therian mammals (marsupials and eutherians) doe...
MicroRNAs are small noncoding RNAs regulating expression of protein coding genes at post-transcriptional level and controlling several biological processes. At present microRNAs have been identified in various...
A number of innovations underlie the origin of rapid reproductive cycles in angiosperms. A critical early step involved the modification of an ancestrally short and slow-growing pollen tube for faster and long...
Bryozoa is a clade of aquatic protostomes. The bryozoan life cycle typically comprises a larval stage, which metamorphoses into a sessile adult that proliferates by asexual budding to form colonies. The homolo...
The Sox genes are important regulators of animal development belonging to the HMG domain-containing class of transcription factors. Studies in bilaterian models have notably highlighted their pivotal role in cont...
Mammals as a rule have seven cervical vertebrae, except for sloths and manatees. Bateson proposed that the change in the number of cervical vertebrae in sloths is due to homeotic transformations. A recent hypo...
The Correction to this article has been published in EvoDevo 2021 12:13
Stem cells have a critical role during adult growth and regeneration. Germline stem cells are specialized stem cells that produce gametes during sexual reproduction. Capitella teleta (formerly Capitella sp. I) is...
Hox proteins specify segment identity during embryogenesis and have typical associated expression patterns. Changes in embryonic expression and activity of Hox genes were crucial in the evolution of animal body p...
The Pax transcription factor gene eyegone (eyg) participates in many developmental processes in Drosophila, including the Notch signaling activated postembryonic growth of the eye primordium, global development o...
Tremendous progress has been made in the field of evo-devo through comparisons of related genes from diverse taxa. While the vast number of species in nature precludes a complete analysis of the molecular evol...
Eyes in bilaterian metazoans have been described as being composed of either ciliary or rhabdomeric photoreceptors. Phylogenetic distribution, as well as distinct morphologies and characteristic deployment of ...
Segmentation is a hallmark of the arthropods; most knowledge about the molecular basis of arthropod segmentation comes from work on the fly Drosophila melanogaster. In this species a hierarchic cascade of segment...
Flowering is a critical transition in plant development, the timing of which can have considerable fitness consequences. Until recently, research into the genetic control of flowering time and its associated d...
Nuclear receptors (NRs) are an ancient superfamily of metazoan transcription factors that play critical roles in regulation of reproduction, development, and energetic homeostasis. Although the evolutionary re...
Gastrulation is a uniquely metazoan character, and its genesis was arguably the key step that enabled the remarkable diversification within this clade. The process of gastrulation involves two tightly coupled ...
Cichlid fishes have undergone rapid, expansive evolutionary radiations that are manifested in the diversification of their trophic morphologies, tooth patterning and coloration. Understanding the molecular mec...
The heads of annelids (earthworms, polychaetes, and others) and arthropods (insects, myriapods, spiders, and others) and the arthropod-related onychophorans (velvet worms) show similar brain architecture and f...
The floral homeotic C function gene AGAMOUS (AG) confers stamen and carpel identity and is involved in the regulation of floral meristem termination in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis ag mutants show complete homeotic c...
zic genes are members of the gli/glis/nkl/zic super-family of C2H2 zinc finger (ZF) transcription factors. Homologs of the zic family have been implicated in patterning neural and mesodermal tissues in bilaterian...
The modern coelacanth (Latimeria) is the extant taxon of a basal sarcopterygian lineage and sister group to tetrapods. Apart from certain apomorphic traits, its morphology is characterized by a high degree of ret...
Intercellular signaling pathways are a fundamental component of the integrating cellular behavior required for the evolution of multicellularity. The genomes of three of the four early branching animal phyla (...
The much-debated phylogenetic relationships of the five early branching metazoan lineages (Bilateria, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Placozoa and Porifera) are of fundamental importance in piecing together events that ...
The polychaete annelid Capitella teleta (formerly Capitella sp. I) develops by spiral cleavage and has been the focus of several recent developmental studies aided by a fully sequenced genome. Fate mapping in pol...
The zona limitans intrathalamica (ZLI) and the isthmus organizer (IsO) are two major secondary organizers of vertebrate brain development. These organizers are located at the interface of the expression domains o...
Comparative analyses between amphibians, concentrating on the cellular mechanisms of morphogenesis, reveal a large variability in the early developmental processes that were thought to be conserved during evol...
The segregation of the germline from somatic tissues is an essential process in the development of all animals. Specification of the primordial germ cells (PGCs) takes place via different strategies across ani...
Antisense transcripts of Ultrabithorax (aUbx) in the millipede Glomeris and the centipede Lithobius are expressed in patterns complementary to that of the Ubx sense transcripts. A similar complementary expression...
Homeobox genes are a superclass of transcription factors with diverse developmental regulatory functions, which are found in plants, fungi and animals. In animals, several Antennapedia (ANTP)-class homeobox ge...
A through gut is present in almost all metazoans, and most likely represents an ancient innovation that enabled bilaterian animals to exploit a wide range of habitats. Molecular developmental studies indicate ...
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