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Evolutionary developmental biology and morphology

Section edited by David Ferrier

This section considers studies in the evolution of development and developmental processes, and into morphological evolution.

Page 3 of 5

  1. The volvocine lineage, containing unicellular Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and differentiated multicellular Volvox carteri, is a powerful model for comparative studies aiming at understanding emergence of multicellu...

    Authors: Yoko Arakaki, Takayuki Fujiwara, Hiroko Kawai-Toyooka, Kaoru Kawafune, Jonathan Featherston, Pierre M. Durand, Shin-ya Miyagishima and Hisayoshi Nozaki
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:243
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  2. Longwing butterflies, Heliconius sp., also called heliconians, are striking examples of diversity and mimicry in butterflies. Heliconians feature strongly colored patterns on their wings, arising from wing scales...

    Authors: Bodo D. Wilts, Aidan J. M. Vey, Adriana D. Briscoe and Doekele G. Stavenga
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:226
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  3. Phylactolaemata is commonly regarded the earliest branch within Bryozoa and thus the sister group to the other bryozoan taxa, Cyclostomata and Gymnolaemata. Therefore, the taxon is important for the reconstruc...

    Authors: Natalie Gawin, Andreas Wanninger and Thomas Schwaha
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:225
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  4. The Spiralia are a large, morphologically diverse group of protostomes (e.g. molluscs, annelids, nemerteans) that share a homologous mode of early development called spiral cleavage. One of the most highly-con...

    Authors: Deirdre C. Lyons, Kimberly J. Perry and Jonathan Q. Henry
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:217
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  5. Segmental composition and homologies of the head of stem-group Euarthropoda have been the foci of recent studies on arthropod origins. An emerging hypothesis suggests that upper-stem group euarthropods possess...

    Authors: Peiyun Cong, Allison C. Daley, Gregory D. Edgecombe and Xianguang Hou
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:208
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  6. Non-coding small RNAs (sRNAs) regulate a variety of important biological processes across all life domains, including bacteria. However, little is known about the functional evolution of sRNAs in bacteria, whi...

    Authors: I-Chen Kimberly Chen, Gregory J. Velicer and Yuen-Tsu Nicco Yu
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:199
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  7. Animals use information from their environment to make decisions, ultimately to maximize their fitness. The nematode C. elegans has a pheromone signalling system, which hitherto has principally been thought to be...

    Authors: Barney Wharam, Laura Weldon and Mark Viney
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:197
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  9. The nervous system in brachiopods has seldom been studied with modern methods. An understanding of lophophore innervation in adult brachiopods is useful for comparing the innervation of the same lophophore typ...

    Authors: Elena N. Temereva and Tatyana V. Kuzmina
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:172
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  10. Gene duplications provide genetic material for the evolution of new morphological and physiological features. One copy can preserve the original gene functions while the second copy may evolve new functions (n...

    Authors: Natascha Turetzek, Sara Khadjeh, Christoph Schomburg and Nikola-Michael Prpic
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:168
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  12. Pax genes are transcription factors with significant roles in cell fate specification and tissue differentiation during animal ontogeny. Most information on their tempo-spatial mode of expression is available ...

    Authors: Maik Scherholz, Emanuel Redl, Tim Wollesen, André Luiz de Oliveira, Christiane Todt and Andreas Wanninger
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:81
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  14. Rotifers are microscopic aquatic invertebrates that reproduce both sexually and asexually. Though rotifers are phylogenetically distant from humans, and have specialized reproductive physiology, this work iden...

    Authors: Brande L. Jones, Chris Walker, Bahareh Azizi, Laren Tolbert, Loren Dean Williams and Terry W. Snell
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:65
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  15. Extreme environments prompt the evolution of characteristic adaptations. Yet questions remain about whether radiations in extreme environments originate from a single lineage that masters a key adaptive pathwa...

    Authors: Chong Chen, Katsuyuki Uematsu, Katrin Linse and Julia D. Sigwart
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:62
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  16. During embryogenesis, tight regulation of retinoic acid (RA) availability is fundamental for normal development. In parallel to RA synthesis, a negative feedback loop controlled by RA catabolizing enzymes of t...

    Authors: João E. Carvalho, Maria Theodosiou, Jie Chen, Pascale Chevret, Susana Alvarez, Angel R. De Lera, Vincent Laudet, Jenifer C. Croce and Michael Schubert
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:24
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  17. Bone-eating worms of the genus Osedax (Annelida, Siboglinidae) have adapted to whale fall environments by acquiring a novel characteristic called the root, which branches and penetrates into sunken bones. The wor...

    Authors: Norio Miyamoto, Masa-aki Yoshida, Hiroyuki Koga and Yoshihiro Fujiwara
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2017 17:17
    Content type: Research Article Published on:

  20. Volvocine algae, which range from the unicellular Chlamydomonas to the multicellular Volvox with a germ–soma division of labor, are a model for the evolution of multicellularity. Within this group, the spheroidal...

    Authors: Shota Yamashita, Yoko Arakaki, Hiroko Kawai-Toyooka, Akira Noga, Masafumi Hirono and Hisayoshi Nozaki
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:243
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  21. The primordial germ cells (PGCs) giving rise to gametes are determined by two different mechanisms in vertebrates. While the germ cell fate in mammals and salamanders is induced by zygotic signals, maternally ...

    Authors: Adrijana Škugor, Helge Tveiten, Hanne Johnsen and Øivind Andersen
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:232
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  22. Avian plumage is ideal for investigating phenotypic convergence because of repeated evolution of the same within-feather patterns. In birds, there are three major types of regular patterns within feathers: sca...

    Authors: Thanh-Lan Gluckman and Nicholas I. Mundy
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:172
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  23. Despite the great importance of lepidopteran wing patterns in various biological disciplines, homologies between wing pattern elements in different moth and butterfly lineages are still not understood. Among o...

    Authors: Sandra R. Schachat and Richard L. Brown
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:116
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  24. The evolution of novel genes is thought to be a critical component of morphological innovation but few studies have explicitly examined the contribution of novel genes to the evolution of novel tissues. Nemato...

    Authors: Leslie S. Babonis, Mark Q. Martindale and Joseph F. Ryan
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:114
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  25. Developmental processes that underpin morphological variation have become a focus of interest when attempting to interpret macroevolutionary patterns. Recently, the Dental Inhibitory Cascade (dic) model has been ...

    Authors: Katherine E. Carter and Steven Worthington
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:110
    Content type: Research Article Published on:

  26. Bone-devouring Osedax worms were described over a decade ago from deep-sea whale falls. The gutless females (and in one species also the males) have a unique root system that penetrates the bone and nourishes the...

    Authors: Katrine Worsaae, Nadezhda N. Rimskaya-Korsakova and Greg W. Rouse
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:83
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  27. The ParaHox genes play an integral role in the anterior-posterior (A-P) patterning of the nervous system and gut of most animals. The ParaHox cluster is an ideal system in which to study the evolution and regu...

    Authors: Myles G. Garstang, Peter W. Osborne and David E. K. Ferrier
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:57
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  28. Research into various aspects of coral biology has greatly increased in recent years due to anthropogenic threats to coral health including pollution, ocean warming and acidification. However, knowledge of cor...

    Authors: Nami Okubo, David C. Hayward, Sylvain Forêt and Eldon E. Ball
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:48
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  29. Secondary winglessness is a common phenomenon found among neopteran insects. With an estimated age of at least 140 million years, the cave crickets (Rhaphidophoridae) form the oldest exclusively wingless linea...

    Authors: Fanny Leubner, Thomas Hörnschemeyer and Sven Bradler
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:39
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  30. During development, humans and other jawed vertebrates (Gnathostomata) express distinct hemoglobin genes, resulting in different hemoglobin tetramers. Embryonic and fetal hemoglobin have higher oxygen affiniti...

    Authors: Kim Rohlfing, Friederike Stuhlmann, Margaret F. Docker and Thorsten Burmester
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:30
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  32. The regulation of cellular membrane trafficking in all eukaryotes is a very complex mechanism, mostly regulated by the Rab family proteins. Among all membrane-enclosed organelles, melanosomes are the cellular ...

    Authors: Ugo Coppola, Giovanni Annona, Salvatore D’Aniello and Filomena Ristoratore
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:26
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  33. The origin of the body plan of modern velvet worms (Onychophora) lies in the extinct lobopodians of the Palaeozoic. Helenodora inopinata, from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte of Illinois (Francis Creek Shale, Carbond...

    Authors: Duncan J. E. Murdock, Sarah E. Gabbott and Mark A. Purnell
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:19
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  34. The Mesopsychidae is an extinct family of Mecoptera, comprising eleven described genera from Upper Permian to Lower Cretaceous deposits. In 2009, several well-preserved mesopsychids with long proboscides were ...

    Authors: Xiaodan Lin, Matthew J. H. Shih, Conrad C. Labandeira and Dong Ren
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:1
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  35. The gene regulatory network involved in tooth morphogenesis has been extremely well described in mammals and its modeling has allowed predictions of variations in regulatory pathway that may have led to evolut...

    Authors: Mélanie Debiais-Thibaud, Roxane Chiori, Sébastien Enault, Silvan Oulion, Isabelle Germon, Camille Martinand-Mari, Didier Casane and Véronique Borday-Birraux
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:292
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  37. Gene duplication is believed to be the classical way to form novel genes, but overprinting may be an important alternative. Overprinting allows entirely novel proteins to evolve de novo, i.e., formerly non-coding...

    Authors: Lea Fellner, Svenja Simon, Christian Scherling, Michael Witting, Steffen Schober, Christine Polte, Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin, Daniel A. Keim, Siegfried Scherer and Klaus Neuhaus
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:283
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  38. Rollinschaeta myoplena gen. et sp. nov is described from the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) Konservat-Lagerstätten of Hakel and Hjoula, Lebanon. The myoanatomy of the fossils is preserve...

    Authors: Luke A. Parry, Paul Wilson, Dan Sykes, Gregory D. Edgecombe and Jakob Vinther
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:256
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  39. Morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies suggest that the pantropical genus Bauhinia L. s.l. (Bauhiniinae, Cercideae, Leguminosae) is paraphyletic and may as well be subdivided into nine genera, including...

    Authors: Yanxiang Lin, William Oki Wong, Gongle Shi, Si Shen and Zhenyu Li
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:252
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  40. Serotonin represents an evolutionary ancient neurotransmitter that is ubiquitously found among animals including the lophotrochozoan phylum Bryozoa, a group of colonial filter-feeders. Comparatively little is ...

    Authors: Thomas F. Schwaha and Andreas Wanninger
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:223
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  41. Holometabolous insects are the most diverse, speciose and ubiquitous group of multicellular organisms in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. The enormous evolutionary and ecological success of Holometabola ...

    Authors: Joachim T. Haug, Conrad C. Labandeira, Jorge A. Santiago-Blay, Carolin Haug and Susan Brown
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:208
    Content type: Research article Published on:

    The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:169

  42. A fundamental and enduring problem in evolutionary biology is to understand how populations differentiate in the wild, yet little is known about what role organismal development plays in this process. Organism...

    Authors: Marie-Julie Favé, Robert A. Johnson, Stefan Cover, Stephan Handschuh, Brian D. Metscher, Gerd B. Müller, Shyamalika Gopalan and Ehab Abouheif
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:183
    Content type: Research Article Published on:

  43. Ameloblastin (AMBN) is a phosphorylated, proline/glutamine-rich protein secreted during enamel formation. Previous studies have revealed that this enamel matrix protein was present early in vertebrate evolutio...

    Authors: Frédéric Delsuc, Barbara Gasse and Jean-Yves Sire
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:148
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  44. The arthropod ventral nerve cord features a comparably low number of serotonin-immunoreactive neurons, occurring in segmentally repeated arrays. In different crustaceans and hexapods, these neurons have been i...

    Authors: Georg Brenneis and Gerhard Scholtz
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:136
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  45. Mammals show a predictable scaling relationship between limb bone size and body mass. This relationship has a genetic basis which likely evolved via natural selection, but it is unclear how much the genetic co...

    Authors: Marta Marchini, Leah M Sparrow, Miranda N Cosman, Alexandra Dowhanik, Carsten B Krueger, Benedikt Hallgrimsson and Campbell Rolian
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:258
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  46. Phenotypic diversity among populations may result from divergent natural selection acting directly on traits or via correlated responses to changes in other traits. One of the most frequent patterns of correla...

    Authors: Márcio S Araújo, S Ivan Perez, Maria Julia C Magazoni and Ana C Petry
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:251
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  47. Insect compound eyes are composed of ommatidia, which contain photoreceptor cells that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light defined by the specific rhodopsin proteins that they express. The fruit fly D...

    Authors: Maarten Hilbrant, Isabel Almudi, Daniel J Leite, Linta Kuncheria, Nico Posnien, Maria DS Nunes and Alistair P McGregor
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:240
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  48. Osteohistological examinations of fossil vertebrates have utilized a number of proxies, such as counts and spacing of lines of arrested growth (LAGs) and osteocyte lacunar densities (OLD), in order to make inf...

    Authors: Thomas M Cullen, David C Evans, Michael J Ryan, Philip J Currie and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:231
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  49. Calcium carbonate biominerals form often complex and beautiful skeletal elements, including coral exoskeletons and mollusc shells. Although the ability to generate these carbonate structures was apparently gai...

    Authors: Oliver Voigt, Marcin Adamski, Kasia Sluzek and Maja Adamska
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:230
    Content type: Research article Published on:
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