Journal
EVOLUTION
Volume 63, Issue 11, Pages 2771-2789Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00761.x
Keywords
Comparative analysis; developmental pathways; evolution of development; parallel evolution; pleiotropy
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Funding
- NSF [DEB-0823673, IOS-0815141]
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0815141] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems [0815141] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Molecular genetic analysis of phenotypic variation has revealed many examples of evolutionary change in the developmental pathways that control plant and animal morphology. A major challenge is to integrate the information from diverse organisms and traits to understand the general patterns of developmental evolution. This integration can be facilitated by evolutionary metamodels-traits that have undergone multiple independent changes in different species and whose development is controlled by well-studied regulatory pathways. The metamodel approach provides the comparative equivalent of experimental replication, allowing us to test whether the evolution of each developmental pathway follows a consistent pattern, and whether different pathways are predisposed to different modes of evolution by their intrinsic organization. A review of several metamodels suggests that the structure of developmental pathways may bias the genetic basis of phenotypic evolution, and highlights phylogenetic replication as a value-added approach that produces deeper insights into the mechanisms of evolution than single-species analyses.
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