Complexity Digest 2006.09 - 05.01
27-Feb-2006
Developmental Origins of Animal Body Plans, SFI Working Papers
Excerpts: There is a variety of questions one might like to answer about the origin of animal bodyplans: When did these bodyplans arise? What was the rate of developmental and morphological innovation associated with these events? How reliably does the fossil record reflect the pattern of metazoan divergences and the timing of origin of bodyplans? How do these events relate to environmental and ecological changes? And more broadly, what, if anything, does this evolutionary episode tell us about the nature of the evolutionary process? (..) Here I will focus largely on the developmental aspects of the origin of animal bodyplans (...) Contrary to all expectation, such comparative studies have revealed remarkable conservation of regulatory elements across considerable phylogenetic distance.
- Source: Developmental Origins of Animal Body Plans
[ http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/wpabstract/200602004 ], Douglas H. Erwin, DOI: SFI-WP 06-02-004, SFI Working Papers