Evo devo, punk-band-inspired slang for “evolutionary developmental biology,” holds the promise of a radical new way to look at life’s evolution. Its central thesis is simple. Organisms show two kinds of change through time: during the lifetime of a single animal (you don’t look much like the egg you started as) and during the evolutionary history of a biological lineage (you don’t look much like your three-and-a-half-billion-year-old ancestor). Evo devo’s key claim is that the first kind of change can provide important insights into the second.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:03 AM  |