Thermal Adaptations in Animals: Genes, Development, and Evolution.

Thermal adaptation to environmental temperature is a driving force in animal evolution. This chapter presents thermal adaptation in ectotherms and endotherms from the perspective of developmental biology. In ectotherms, there are known examples of temperature influencing morphological characteristics, such as seasonal color change, melanization, and sex determination.

A Neanderthal/Denisovan GLI3 variant contributes to anatomical variations in mice.

Changes in genomic structures underlie phenotypic diversification in organisms. Amino acid-changing mutations affect pleiotropic functions of proteins, although little is known about how mutated proteins are adapted in existing developmental programs. Here we investigate the biological effects of a variant of the GLI3 transcription factor (GLI3) carried in Neanderthals and Denisovans, which are extinct hominins close to modern humans.