Category: Uncategorized

CENTRALITY OF MOSAICISM. "There is no doubt that early embryos resemble each other more closely than do late-stage embryos (von Baer’s Law). This is not surprising given the centrality of mosaicism in evolutionary and developmental change, with a basic framework of ancestral, plesiomorphic features that is later supplanted or overlain by derived apomorphies." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

STASIS NOT CHANGE. "Paedomorphosis, the retention of ‘child-like’ larval or juvenile forms (like the external filamentous gills of aquatic salamanders), is yet another way in which organismal features are retained rather than changed, and another way in which the interactions of phylogeny and ontogeny are reflected in their mutual history." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

HOMOLOGOUS STRUCTURES. "The gubernaculum testis, a narrow band of connective tissue that ‘pulls’ the descending testes down into the scrotum, is homologous to the round ligament that suspends the ovary." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

"LICKING of human faces by dogs might be seen as a behavioral exaptation, which now aids in bonding and socialization but which has been hypothesized to have initially evolved in ancestral wolves as a submissive behavior that prompted dominant wolves to regurgitate food." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

UROGENITAL HOLDOVERS: "many well-known homologies of male and female genital structures—for example, the male glans penis and female clitoris; the scrotum and labia majora—are evo-devo traces of shared early origins." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATIONS. "Examples of classical structural exaptations include the lungs of early fishes, which in most osteichthyan clades evolved into swim bladders for buoyancy control, and avian feathers, which initially arose as thermoregulatory (insulating) structures but now also serve courtship (display) and locomotor (flight) functions." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

LINGERING SHADOWS. "Remains of the notochord are retained as the gel-like nucleus pulposus at the center of intervertebral discs. It is difficult if not impossible to discern these transformations as remnants of solely evolutionary or developmental alteration—plainly, these changes are intertwined—but it is abundantly clear that the structures that remain are mere shadows of their former ontogenetic and phylogenetic states, and thus guides to organismal history." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

FINDING A NEW FUNCTION. "With exaptations (‘pre-adaptations’) the function changes over time, yielding other historical information. As with vestiges, an exaptation can be a structure but it can also be a behavior or process." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

ANACHRONISTIC ADAPTATIONS. "A good example is the large, hard-shelled, gourd-type fruit of the calabash (Crescentia) tree, which has been posited as an ‘anachronistic’ adaptation for seed dispersal by gomphotheres, large, elephant-like mammals that went extinct over 10,000 years ago." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

"ADAPTATIONS too reveal important lessons about the past, and this is particularly true when environmental changes render an adaptation apparently useless." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn