Evolutionary Innovations

About this book

Evolutionary innovations – the bony skeleton of vertebrates, avian flight, or the insect pollination system of angiosperms, for example – have in recent years become the focus of much fertile new research in evolutionary biology. Innovations may hold the keys to understanding why whole new groups of organisms evolve or, conversely, why groups of organisms become extinct. Evolutionary Innovations brings together contributors from the fields of morphology, genetics, embryology, physiology, and paleontology to present research on evolutionary innovations and to suggest directions for further work.

The topics covered include the plurality of evolutionary innovations, patterns and processes at different hierarchical levels, evolutionary genetics of adaptations, heterochrony and other mechanisms of radical evolutionary change in early development, developmental mechanisms at the origin of morphological novelty, the evolution of morphological variation patterns, functional design and its punctuated products, plausibility and testability in assessing the consequences of evolutionary innovations, paradigms and pitfalls of studying physiological evolution, polyphyletic constructional breakthroughs in fossil and extant species, ecology of evolutionary innovations in the fossil record.

Contents

Preface
Contributors

Introduction - The Plurality of Evolutionary Innovations
      Matthew H. Nitecki

Nature of Evolutionary Innovations
The Origin of Evolutionary Novelties: Pattern and Process at Different Hierarchical Levels
      Joel Cracraft

Genetics and Development
The Evolutionary Genetics of Adaptations
      Brian Charlesworth
Heterochrony and Other Mechanisms of Radical Evolutionary Change in Early Development
      Rudolf Raff, Brian Parr, Annette Parks, and Gregory Wray
Developmental Mechanisms at the Origin of Morphological Novelty: A Side-Effect Hypothesis
      Gerd B. Müller

Morphology and Physiology
The Evolution of Morphological Variation Patterns
      James M. Cheverud
Key Evolutionary Innovations, Differential Diversity, and Symecomorphosis
      Karel F. Liem
Plausibility and Testability: Assessing the Consequences of Evolutionary Innovation
      Jeffrey S. Jensen
Studying Physiological Evolution: Paradigms and Pitfalls
      Warren W. Burggren and William E. Bemis

Paleontology
The Sand-Dollar Syndrome
      Adolf Seilacher
The Ecology of Evolutionary Innovation: The Fossil Record
      David Jablonski and David J. Bottjer

Index

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