In an article published in PNAS in 1998. Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart identified four properties of conserved cellular and developmental processes - versatile proteins, weak regulatory linkage, exploratory mechanisms, and genomic and spatial compartmentation - which, they argue, make these...
Evolution
Revisiting Sommer & Sternberg 1994
In a paper published in Science in 1994, Ralf Sommer and Paul Sternberg provided evidence to suggest that the evolution of organ position in organisms involves changes in the induction and competence of cells. At the time, it was already known that vulva formation in Caenorhabditis elegans happens...
Revisiting Brown 1988
In a paper published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology in 1988, Joel Brown developed a method to use a forager’s giving up density on a resource patch to understand energetic, predation and missed opportunity costs of foraging and then demonstrated its utility, through field experiments, on...
Revisiting Gilbert 2001
In a paper published in Developmental Biology in 2001, Scott Gilbert laid out a vision for the reintegration of developmental biology and ecology. While in its early days, developmental biology paid great attention to the environmental context, in the twentieth century the focus of the discipline...
Revisiting Müller 2007
Evolutionary Developmental Biology (evo-devo for short) was established as a formal discipline in the early 80s and from soon after started making its presence felt in diverse areas of biological research. In 2007, roughly 25 years after the field’s establishment, Gerd Müller contributed an...
Revisiting Laland et al. 2015
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 2015, Kevin Lala, Tobias Uller, Marcus Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka and John Odling-Smee laid out their vision for an "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" (EES), a new framework for Evolution that took...
Revisiting Taborsky 1984
In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 1984, Michael Taborsky presented a cost-benefit analysis of helping behaviour in the cichlid fish Lamprologus brichardi. In this species, individuals of earlier broods stay on in their parents' territories and contribute to the care of the current brood....
Revisiting Meyer et al. 1990
In a paper published in Nature in 1990, Axel Meyer, Thomas Kocher, Pereti Basasibwaki, and Allan Wilson, using mitochondrial DNA sequences, provided evidence in support of a monophyletic origin of the cichlid diversity in Lake Victoria. Whats more, they found that the genetic variation among these...
Revisiting Vermeij 1977
In a paper published in Paleobiology in 1977, Geerat Vermeij examined the Mesozoic reorganisation of shallow water marine communities using gastropod skeletal geometry and other kinds of data. Based on the evidence, Vermeij argued that predation and grazing had grown stronger and become more...
Revisiting Rainey & Travisano 1998
In a paper published in Nature in 1998, Paul Rainey and Michael Travisano showed that identical populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluroescens diversify morphologically when provided with ecological opportunity, but show no divergence when opportunity is restricted. Further, the morphs...