The Development of Animal Form: Ontogeny, Morphology, and Evolution

by Alessandro Minelli

Overview

Contemporary research in evolutionary developmental biology has been predominantly devoted to interpreting basic features of animal architecture in molecular genetics terms. Considerably less time has been spent on the exploitation of the wealth of facts and concepts from traditional disciplines, such as comparative morphology. This book integrates traditional morphological and contemporary molecular genetic approaches and deals with postembryonic development as well. It offers unconventional views on the basic features of animal organization, such as body axes, symmetry, segments, body regions, appendages and related concepts. This book is of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in evolutionary and developmental biology, cell biology, genetics, and zoology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521025188
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/16/2006
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.41(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. The nature of development; 2. Everything begun to the service of development: cellular Darwinism and the origin of animal form; 3. Development: generic to genetic; 4. Periodization; 5. Body regions, their boundaries and complexity; 6. Differentiation and patterning; 7. Size factors; 8. Axes and symmetries; 9. Segments; 10. Evo-devo perspectives on homology; Summary and conclusions; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...engaging and groundbreaking...Minelli's well-edited, well-referenced, and nicely illustrated volume is the first evo-devo book in recent decades to be written by a comparative evolutionary morphologist...This important book should be read by every graduate student whose work touches either or both of the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology." BioScience

"...a welcome addition to the growing EvoDevo literature." Biology and Philosophy

"The book is a focused effort to strike a new balance in the recently revitalized field of research known as evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo. To a surprising extent, given the scope and complexity of the subject matter, it succeeds...[an] important book." Quarterly Review of Biology

"This impressively scholarly book summarizes and further develops [Minelli's] work of the past 30 years...It is a 'must-read' for any practitioner in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology..." Nature

"...an enjoyable and stimulating read...a genuine effort to reconnect evo-devo with a broader natural history. In this, it succeeds beautifully." Nature Genetics

"Alessandro Minelli's The Development of Animal Form stresses 'evo-' and, I believe, is destined to play an important role in the progressive development of the field because it effectively frames new questions and reinterprets old ones.... The book is filled with ideas, testable hypotheses, and suggestions for research projects. It moves us away from model organisms to the richness of comparative biology, always building on the foundation of the stunning successes of the model organism approach. The book is so rich in ideas that I found it hard to put down.... [The book] is a discerning and critical, yet loving, view of a dynamic field. I recommend it especially to graduate students and postdocs. It will be read with profit by those who seriously desire to mold evolutionary developmental biology." Science

"Alessandro Minelli's The Development of Animal Form is now the best example we have of morphological criticism...an important book." Stuart A. Newman, New York Medical College

From the Publisher