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METAMORPHOSIS "facilitates ontogenetic specialization including diet, reducing competition between juveniles and adults and also more effective control of development." The advantages of soup for brains. https://lnkd.in/eTSQd9X View in LinkedIn

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ORGANISMS. "Endopterygote insects—a monophyletic group which are united by complete metamorphosis with internal wing and genitalia development in larval stages—are the most successful living organisms in both species diversity and abundance. One key factor in their success appears to be their life cycle, which includes complete metamorphosis, and hence differentiation between juvenile and adult forms." https://lnkd.in/eTSQd9X View in LinkedIn

BRILLIANT time-lapse film of Monarch butterfly metamorphosis both as the caterpillar changing into the chrysalis and then emerging from it as an adult butterfly. https://youtu.be/ocWgSgMGxOc View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends covers aspects of the magical subject of butterfly metamorphosis. Of nature's stranger exhibits, this surely is one of the best. So much work had to have reasons. "In the 1830s a German naturalist named Renous was arrested in San Fernando, Chile for heresy. His claim? He could turn caterpillars into butterflies." Perhaps it is a heresy. https://lnkd.in/ey33NMW View in LinkedIn

DOWNSIZING. "Ancient WGDs in diploid lineages have undergone a fractionation of the polyploid genome, during which chromosomal rearrangements, gene conversions, heightened transposon activity, and epigenetic changes left behind a reduced set of duplicate gene pairs." (WGD = whole genome duplication). https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

GENERATING GENETIC NOVELTY. "Gene duplication functions as the primary driver of evolutionary novelty within higher eukaryotes." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

DECOUPLED SELECTION. "In addition, holometaboly is hypothesised to have led to increased evolvability (e.g. an increased capacity for adaptive evolution, due to an expansion of baseline phenotypic variation upon which selection can act), and a concomitant decoupling of selective pressures across different life cycle stages." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

FAVORED GENES. "We hypothesize that duplicate gene preservation in Populus is driven by a combination of subfunctionalization of duplicate pairs and purifying selection favoring retention of genes encoding proteins with large numbers of interactions." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

MODULAR LIFE STYLE. "Thus, the compartmentalized or ‘modular’ nature of holometabolous life cycles is thought to have enabled insects to optimize life-history components, such as growth and reproduction, through temporal partitioning." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn