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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...
Studies on early neurogenesis have had considerable impact on the discussion of the phylogenetic relationships of arthropods, having revealed striking similarities and differences between the major lineages. I...
In many bilaterians, asymmetric activation of canonical Wnt (cWnt) signaling at the posterior pole is critical for anterior-posterior (AP) body axis formation. In 16-cell stage sea urchins, nuclearization of β...
In many insect taxa, wing polymorphism is known to be a consequence of tradeoffs between flight and other life-history traits. The pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum exhibits various morphs with or without wings assoc...
Polyclad flatworms are an early branching clade within the rhabditophoran Platyhelminthes. They provide an interesting system with which to explore the evolution of development within Platyhelminthes and among...
The Mexican tetra (Astyanax mexicanus) has emerged as a good animal model to study the constructive and regressive changes associated with living in cave environments, as both the ancestral sighted morph and the ...
The question of whether the ancestral bilaterian had a central nervous system (CNS) or a diffuse ectodermal nervous system has been hotly debated. Considerable evidence supports the theory that a CNS evolved j...
Animals inhabiting the darkness of caves are generally blind and de-pigmented, regardless of the phylum they belong to. Survival in this environment is an enormous challenge, the most obvious being to find foo...
In blind cave-dwelling populations of Astyanax mexicanus, several morphological and behavioral shifts occurred during evolution in caves characterized by total and permanent darkness. Previous studies have shown ...
Extreme environmental conditions can give rise to extreme adaptations. We document growth, sexual maturation and fecundity in two species of African annual fish inhabiting temporary savanna pools.
The Related Article to this article has been published in Nature Protocols 2016 11:nprot.2016.080
Hox genes encode transcription factors that have an ancestral role in all bilaterian animals in specifying regions along the antero-posterior axis. In arthropods (insects, crustaceans, myriapods and chelicerat...
Most geophilomorph centipedes show intraspecific variability in the number of leg-bearing segments. This intraspecific variability generally has a component that is related to sex, with females having on avera...
The original article was published in EvoDevo 2013 4:14
A complex life cycle, such as complete metamorphosis, is a key innovation that can promote diversification of species. The evolution of a morphologically distinct larval stage is thought to have enabled insect...
During their evolution towards a complete life cycle on land, stem reptiles developed both an impermeable multi-layered keratinized epidermis and skin appendages (scales) providing mechanical, thermal, and che...
The “9th Okazaki Biology Conference: Marine Biology II” held at the National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB) in Okazaki, Japan and at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Okinawa, Japan...
In a previous study, we showed that the cephalochordate amphioxus Branchiostoma floridae has localized maternal transcripts of conserved germ cell markers Vasa and Nanos in its early embryos. These results provid...
The de novo assembly of transcriptomes from short shotgun sequencesraises challenges due to random and non-random sequencing biases andinherent transcript complexity. We sought to define a pipeline for denovo tra...
Various shapes of gastropod shells have evolved ever since the Cambrian. Although theoretical analyses of morphogenesis exist, the molecular basis of shell development remains unclear. We compared expression p...
Hox genes are the key determinants of different morphogenetic events in all bilaterian animals. These genes are probably responsible for the maintenance of regenerative capacities by providing positional infor...
The Erratum to this article has been published in EvoDevo 2013 4:21
Hox genes are the family of transcription factors that play a key role in the patterning of the anterior-posterior axis of all bilaterian animals. These genes display clustered organization and colinear expressio...
The neural crest represents a highly multipotent population of embryonic stem cells found only in vertebrate embryos. Acquisition of the neural crest during the evolution of vertebrates was a great advantage, ...
The original article was published in EvoDevo 2012 3:11
In most species of aphid, female nymphs develop into either sexual or asexual adults depending on the length of the photoperiod to which their mothers were exposed. The progeny of these sexual and asexual fema...
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