Premium
METAMODELS AND PHYLOGENETIC REPLICATION: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO THE EVOLUTION OF DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAYS
Author(s) -
Kopp Artyom
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00761.x
Subject(s) - biology , evolutionary developmental biology , evolutionary biology , phylogenetic tree , replication (statistics) , phenotype , phylogenetics , phylogenetic comparative methods , parallel evolution , computational biology , genetics , gene , virology
Molecular genetic analysis of phenotypic variation has revealed many examples of evolutionary change in the developmental pathways that control plant and animal morphology. A major challenge is to integrate the information from diverse organisms and traits to understand the general patterns of developmental evolution. This integration can be facilitated by evolutionary metamodels—traits that have undergone multiple independent changes in different species and whose development is controlled by well‐studied regulatory pathways. The metamodel approach provides the comparative equivalent of experimental replication, allowing us to test whether the evolution of each developmental pathway follows a consistent pattern, and whether different pathways are predisposed to different modes of evolution by their intrinsic organization. A review of several metamodels suggests that the structure of developmental pathways may bias the genetic basis of phenotypic evolution, and highlights phylogenetic replication as a value‐added approach that produces deeper insights into the mechanisms of evolution than single‐species analyses.