Reduce, reuse, and recycle: developmental evolution of trait diversification.

Evolutionary Genetics: Reuse, Recycle, Converge

Our understanding of how genetic changes underlie the evolution of traits is growing fast. Two new studies now show that changes in the same genetic loci can drive the evolution of the same trait in multiple Drosophila species.

Homology and homoplasy: the retention of genetic programmes.

Homology describes the inevitable evolutionary phenomenon that the similarity of structures among different organisms is due to the commonality of their descent. This continuity of information is maintained in evolutionary lineages in terms of genes and developmental mechanisms and will retain 'sameness' and retard, funnel and direct evolutionary diversification. Analogous 'sameness' is said to...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Practical Approaches to Schema Integration, Evolution and Versioning

Three themes are apparent in recent schema integration, evolution and versioning research. First, the need to reduce the number of schema changes that are necessary. The approach here has been to build into the conceptual and data models the scope to accommodate modest changes to definition. Second, research that aims to reuse the current schema definition through procedures that mask the chang...

Recycle, Reduce, Reuse

Beetle horns and horned beetles: emerging models in developmental evolution and ecology.

Many important questions in developmental biology increasingly interface with related questions in other biological disciplines such as evolutionary biology and ecology. In this article, we review and summarize recent progress in the development of horned beetles and beetle horns as study systems amenable to the integration of a wide range of approaches, from gene function analysis in the labor...