Eco-Evo-Devo

Next Tuesday I thought we could read a paper that has been on my to-read list for a while. It's a review by Scott Gilbert et al. entitled 'Eco-Evo-Devo: developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity as evolutionary agents'.

I'm not sure if the paper says anything radically new, but I think it might be a nice entry point to a discussion about how ecology, evolution and development fit together and what the future of this interdisciplinary field might hold for us.

You can find the paper here and below the abstract:

The integration of research from developmental biology and ecology into evolutionary theory has given rise to a relatively new field, ecological evolutionary developmental biology (Eco-Evo-Devo). This field integrates and organizes concepts such as developmental symbiosis, developmental plasticity, genetic accommodation, extragenic inheritance and niche construction. This Review highlights the roles that developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity have in evolution. Developmental symbiosis can generate particular organs, can produce selectable genetic variation for the entire animal, can provide mechanisms for reproductive isolation, and may have facilitated evolutionary transitions. Developmental plasticity is crucial for generating novel phenotypes, facilitating evolutionary transitions and altered ecosystem dynamics, and promoting adaptive variation through genetic accommodation and niche construction. In emphasizing such non-genomic mechanisms of selectable and heritable variation, Eco-Evo-Devo presents a new layer of evolutionary synthesis.

When: Tuesday August 30 at 10.00

Where: "Argumentet", 2nd floor, Ecology Building

There might be some fika ;-)