Cover
Half-title
Series information
Title page
Copyright information
Reviews
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 What is Evo-Devo and Why is it Important?
What is Evo-Devo?
Origins of Evo-Devo: the Homeobox
Origins of Evo-Devo: Other Factors
Evo-Devo and Darwinism
The Importance of Evo-Devo
2 Antecedents of Evo-Devo
Quasi-Distinct Stretches of Time
Nineteenth-Century Comparative Embryology
From Haeckel to Homeobox
Take-Home Messages From History
(a) No Universal Laws in Biology
(b) A Messy but Interesting Relationship
(c) A Recurring Debate
3 Evolutionary and Developmental Essentials
Evolutionary Pattern
Evolutionary Process
Development in the Context of Life Cycles
Model Organisms
The Nature of the Developmental Process
4 Evo-Devo Essentials
Developmental Repatterning
Developmental Constraint, Bias, or Channelling
Modularity and Evolvability
The Evo-Devo Hourglass
Body Plans and Evolutionary Novelties
Genes for Building Bodies
5 The Evolution of Variations on a Theme
Levels of Evolutionary Change
Developmental Variation
Artificial Selection and Developmental Bias
Phenotypic Plasticity and Developmental Bias
Natural Selection and Genetic Drift
Natural Selection and Developmental Bias
6 The Evolutionary Origins of Themes and Novelties
Developmental Bias versus Macromutation
Evolution of Reversed Asymmetry
The Nature of Novelty
Type I Novelty: the Turtle's Shell
Type II Novelty: the Centipede's Venom Claws
From Case Studies to Generalizations
7 The Evolutionary Origins of Body Plans
The Pattern of Animal Relatedness
The Timescale of Body-Plan Origins
Mechanisms of Body-Plan Origins
Genes and Body-Plan Origins
8 Body-Plan Features and Toolkit Genes
Homologous versus Convergent Features
Genes and Generality
Segments, Notch Signalling, and Hox Genes
Limbs, distal-less, and Dlx Genes
Eyes, eyeless, and Pax Genes
Gene Co-option in Evolution
9 Bringing It All Together
A Combined View of Development
Towards a More Comprehensive Evolutionary Synthesis
Variation and its Interaction with Selection
Developmental Repatterning
Developmental Bias and the Direction of Evolution
The Origins of Novelties and Body Plans
The Pattern of Occupation of Morphospace
Concluding Remarks
Summary of Common Misunderstandings
Evolution can be adequately described by a theory that is framed in terms of changes of gene frequencies in populations.
The organism can be thought of as a suite of phenotypic characteristics.
Developmental processes are completely determined by genes.
Evolution and development are independent processes operating at very different timescales.
The role of development in evolution is always negative - as might be assumed from the common use of the phrase 'developmental constraint'.
Natural selection always produces environment-specific adaptation.
Terms like evolutionary novelty and body plan are either precise and clear-cut on the one hand or so vague as to be useless on the other.
Major changes in development, and hence body form, require alterations in many different genes.
Sudden radical evolutionary change in the form of an adult animal is easy because some genes have key developmental roles.
Mutations contributing to evolutionary change can be arranged on a continuum from small to large effects on development.
References
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Figure Credits
Index