ABSTRACT
Many scientists and philosophers of science are troubled by the relative isolation of developmental from evolutionary biology. Reconciling the science of development with the science of heredity preoccupied a minority of biologists for much of the twentieth century, but these efforts were not corporately successful. Mainly in the past fifteen years, however, these previously dispersed integrating programmes have been themselves synthesized and so reinvigorated. Two of these more recent synthesizing endeavours are evolutionary developmental biology (EDB, or "evo-devo") and developmental systems theory (DST). While the former is a bourgeoning and scientifically well-respected biological discipline, the same cannot be said of DST, which is virtually unknown among biologists. In this review, we provide overviews of DST and EDB, summarize their key tenets, examine how they relate to one another and to the study of epigenetics, and survey the impact that DST and EDB have had (and in future should have) on biological theory and practice.
Subject(s)
Biological Evolution , Models, Biological , Animals , Developmental BiologyABSTRACT
Little is known about the developmental biology of caecilians-tropical, elongate, limbless, mostly fossorial amphibians that are members of the Order Gymnophiona. Ichthyophis kohtaoensis (Family Ichthyophiidae; southeast Asia) is an oviparous species in which maternal care of the clutch is provided. The clutch is laid in a burrow on land, and the embryos develop in their egg membranes, curved around a large yolk mass. Larvae are aquatic and exhibit characteristic features that are not present in the terrestrial adults. Because accurate descriptions of ontogenies and the establishment of standardized stages of embryonic and larval development are useful for both experimental and comparative embryology, a staging table for I.kohtaoensis was developed based on external morphological features. Development from the end of neurulation to metamorphosis was divided into 20 stages. Principal diagnostic features include development of the lateral line organs, formation of three pairs of external gills, development of the eyes, changes in yolk structure, changes in the structure of the cloacal aperture and growth of the tail, including the formation and regression of the tail fin. This study provides a comparison with descriptions of embryonic stages of I.glutinosus and Hypogeophis rostratus and with a recent staging table for the aquatic, viviparous caecilian Typhlonectes compressicauda, the only other caecilians for which reasonably complete ontogenetic information exists in the literature. Comparisons with established staging tables for selected frogs and salamanders are also presented.
