Maximilian J. Telford and D.T.J. Littlewood (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199549429
- eISBN:
- 9780191721601
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549429.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics, Developmental Biology
Animal life, now and over the past half billion years, is incredibly diverse. Describing and understanding the evolution of this diversity of body plans — from vertebrates such as humans and fish to ...
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Animal life, now and over the past half billion years, is incredibly diverse. Describing and understanding the evolution of this diversity of body plans — from vertebrates such as humans and fish to the numerous invertebrate groups including sponges, insects, molluscs, and the many groups of worms — is a major goal of evolutionary biology. This book adopts a modern, integrated approach to describe how current molecular genetic techniques and disciplines as diverse as palaeontology, embryology, and genomics have been combined, resulting in a dramatic renaissance in the study of animal evolution. The last decade has seen growing interest in evolutionary biology fuelled by a wealth of data from molecular biology. Modern phylogenies integrating evidence from molecules, embryological data, and morphology of living and fossil taxa provide a wide consensus of the major branching patterns of the tree of life; moreover, the links between phenotype and genotype are increasingly well understood. This has resulted in a reliable tree of relationships that has been widely accepted and has spawned numerous new and exciting questions that require a reassessment of the origins and radiation of animal life. The focus of this volume is at the level of major animal groups, the morphological innovations that define them, and the mechanisms of change to their embryology that have resulted in their evolution. Current research themes and future prospects are highlighted including phylogeny reconstruction, comparative developmental biology, the value of different sources of data and the importance of fossils, homology assessment, character evolution, phylogeny of major groups of animals, and genome evolution. These topics are integrated in the light of a 'new animal phylogeny', to provide fresh insights into the patterns and processes of animal evolution.Less
Animal life, now and over the past half billion years, is incredibly diverse. Describing and understanding the evolution of this diversity of body plans — from vertebrates such as humans and fish to the numerous invertebrate groups including sponges, insects, molluscs, and the many groups of worms — is a major goal of evolutionary biology. This book adopts a modern, integrated approach to describe how current molecular genetic techniques and disciplines as diverse as palaeontology, embryology, and genomics have been combined, resulting in a dramatic renaissance in the study of animal evolution. The last decade has seen growing interest in evolutionary biology fuelled by a wealth of data from molecular biology. Modern phylogenies integrating evidence from molecules, embryological data, and morphology of living and fossil taxa provide a wide consensus of the major branching patterns of the tree of life; moreover, the links between phenotype and genotype are increasingly well understood. This has resulted in a reliable tree of relationships that has been widely accepted and has spawned numerous new and exciting questions that require a reassessment of the origins and radiation of animal life. The focus of this volume is at the level of major animal groups, the morphological innovations that define them, and the mechanisms of change to their embryology that have resulted in their evolution. Current research themes and future prospects are highlighted including phylogeny reconstruction, comparative developmental biology, the value of different sources of data and the importance of fossils, homology assessment, character evolution, phylogeny of major groups of animals, and genome evolution. These topics are integrated in the light of a 'new animal phylogeny', to provide fresh insights into the patterns and processes of animal evolution.
Antonio Fontdevila
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199541379
- eISBN:
- 9780191728532
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541379.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics, Developmental Biology
The ever‐increasing knowledge of whole genome sequences is unveiling a variety of new structures and mechanisms that impinge on current evolutionary theory. The origin of species, the evolution of ...
More
The ever‐increasing knowledge of whole genome sequences is unveiling a variety of new structures and mechanisms that impinge on current evolutionary theory. The origin of species, the evolution of form and the evolutionary impact of transposable elements are just a few of the many processes that have been revolutionized by ongoing genome studies. These novelties are examined in this book in relation to their significance for evolution, emphasizing their human relevance. For example, the small genomic differences between humans and chimps challenges our understanding of what makes us humans in terms of genetic differences. Certainly, neither the increase in number of genes nor, probably, the changes in coding sequences are the key evolutionary differences that define our humanity. Most probably the relevant steps towards the evolution of higher forms, humans among them, have arisen in regulatory and assembling processes that decide when, where, and in which combination the already existing genetic blocks operate. These are just a few glimpses of these controversial issues that this book examines in the context of Darwinian evolution. Recently this debate has centred on arguments extracted from genomic and molecular information that have been intended to ‘deconstruct’ the Darwinian Theory. The purpose of this book is to show that whilst genome dynamism is providing new, and previously unanticipated, sources of variability, there is no reason to dismiss the role of natural selection as the leading mechanism that sorts out the adaptive potentialities. This book provides many examples to justify the argument to ‘reconstruct’, rather than to ‘deconstruct’, the Darwinian Theory.Less
The ever‐increasing knowledge of whole genome sequences is unveiling a variety of new structures and mechanisms that impinge on current evolutionary theory. The origin of species, the evolution of form and the evolutionary impact of transposable elements are just a few of the many processes that have been revolutionized by ongoing genome studies. These novelties are examined in this book in relation to their significance for evolution, emphasizing their human relevance. For example, the small genomic differences between humans and chimps challenges our understanding of what makes us humans in terms of genetic differences. Certainly, neither the increase in number of genes nor, probably, the changes in coding sequences are the key evolutionary differences that define our humanity. Most probably the relevant steps towards the evolution of higher forms, humans among them, have arisen in regulatory and assembling processes that decide when, where, and in which combination the already existing genetic blocks operate. These are just a few glimpses of these controversial issues that this book examines in the context of Darwinian evolution. Recently this debate has centred on arguments extracted from genomic and molecular information that have been intended to ‘deconstruct’ the Darwinian Theory. The purpose of this book is to show that whilst genome dynamism is providing new, and previously unanticipated, sources of variability, there is no reason to dismiss the role of natural selection as the leading mechanism that sorts out the adaptive potentialities. This book provides many examples to justify the argument to ‘reconstruct’, rather than to ‘deconstruct’, the Darwinian Theory.