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- Title
Where is, in 2017, the evo in evo‐devo (evolutionary developmental biology)?
- Authors
Diogo, Rui
- Abstract
Abstract: After the inaugural Pan‐American‐Evo‐Devo meeting (2015, Berkeley), I showed how major concerns about evo‐devo (Evolutionary Developmental Biology) research were demonstrated by a simple, non‐biased quantitative analysis of the titles/abstracts of that meeting's talks. Here, I apply the same methodology to the titles/abstracts of the recent Pan‐American‐Evo‐Devo meeting (2017, Calgary). The aim is to evaluate if the concerns raised by me in that paper and by other authors have been addressed and/or if there are other types of differences between the two meetings that may reflect trends within the field of evo‐devo. This analysis shows that the proportion of presentations referring to “morphology”, “organism”, “selection”, “adaptive”, “phylogeny”, and their derivatives was higher in the 2017 meeting, which therefore had a more “organismal” feel. However, there was a decrease in the use of “evolution”/its derivatives and of macroevolutionary terms related to the <italic>tempo</italic> and <italic>mode</italic> of evolution in the 2017 meeting. Moreover, the disproportionately high use of genetic/genomic terms clearly shows that evo‐devo continues to be mainly focused on devo, and particularly on “Geno”, that is, on molecular/genetic studies. Furthermore, the vast majority of animal evo‐devo studies are focused only on hard tissues, which are just a small fraction of the whole organism—for example, only 15% of the tissue mass of the human body. The lack of an integrative approach is also evidenced by the lack of studies addressing conceptual/long‐standing broader questions, including the links between ecology and particularly behavior and developmental/evolutionary variability and between evo‐devo and evolutionary medicine.
- Subjects
DEVELOPMENTAL biology; BIOLOGICAL evolution; MOLECULAR biology; DARWINIAN medicine; PHENOTYPES
- Publication
Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular & Developmental Evolution, 2018, Vol 330, Issue 1, p15
- ISSN
1552-5007
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/jez.b.22791