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From Cells to Structures to Evolutionary Novelties: Creating a Continuum

  • Thematic Issue Article: Emergence of Shape
  • Published:
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Abstract

This thematic issue addresses questions of constraints on the evolution of form—physical, biological, and technical. Here, form is defined as an embodiment of a specific structure, which can be hierarchically different yet emerge from the same processes. The focus of this contribution is about how developmental biology and paleontology can be better integrated and compared in order to produce hypotheses about the evolution of form. The constraints on current EvoDevo research stem from the disconnect in the focus of study for developmental geneticists and evolutionary morphologists; the former being interested in early developmental events at a molecular level in a model animal, the latter in late developmental events or comparison between adult forms, at a structural level in non-model animals. In order to truly integrate information from both fields in our understanding of evolutionary processes, morphology needs to be reintegrated in the study of gene expression, and its time frame needs to be extended beyond early developmental stages. Gene expression in non-model organisms also needs to be studied in order to gain perspective into primitive patterning at evolutionary nodes. Hypotheses formed by the comparison of expression patterns and morphologies seen in extant species can then be tested against forms found in the fossil record, coming closer to understanding the mechanisms underlying evolution.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Jeffrey H. Schwartz and Bruno Maresca for inviting me to this workshop and Eva Karner for taking care of us so well. I also wish to thank my co-authors and colleagues Zerina Johanson, Jean Joss, Per Ahlberg, Elga Mark-Kurik, Rolf Ericsson, and Margareta Sutija for the published work presented here. I would also like to thank Wendy Chua and Peter Currie for assistance on zebrafish development matters and Kieran Short, Ian Smythe, and Lynelle Jones for their help with their commercial OPT scanner. Wojtek Goscinski helped integrate OPT scan data in Drishti, and Tom Hall, Tamar Sztal, Silker Berger, Mai Nguyen Chi, Carmen Sonntag, Yona Goldshmidt, and Robert Bryson-Richardson helped with technique development with their advice. Olivier Seralbo and Cyril Picard provided technical assistance for the apotome microscope, and Judy Gallagher and Steven Firth from Monash Micro Imaging Facilities provided information about confocal microscope parameters. I am supported by a fellowship from the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization LT000130/2009L and Australian Research Council discovery grants (DP1096002, DP110101127). I am based at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, which is supported by grants from the State Government of Victoria and the Australian Government.

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  1. ARMI, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Catherine Anne Boisvert

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  1. Catherine Anne Boisvert
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Correspondence to Catherine Anne Boisvert.

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Boisvert, C.A. From Cells to Structures to Evolutionary Novelties: Creating a Continuum. Biol Theory 8, 211–220 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-013-0127-x

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