A Morphospace Exploration Using a General Model of Development Reveals a Basic Set of Morphologies for Early Animal Development and Evolution.

What morphologies are more likely to appear during evolution is a central question in zoology. Here we offer a novel approach to this question based on first developmental principles. We assumed that morphogenesis results from the genetic regulation of cell properties and behaviors (adhesion, contraction, etc.

A mathematical model of development shows that cell division, short-range signaling and self-activating gene networks increase developmental noise while long-range signaling and epithelial stiffness reduce it.

The position of cells during development is constantly subject to noise, i.e. cell-level noise.

On the origins of developmental robustness: modeling buffering mechanisms against cell-level noise.

During development, cells are subject to stochastic fluctuations in their positions (i.e. cell-level noise) that can potentially lead to morphological noise (i.

Evo-devo beyond development: Generalizing evo-devo to all levels of the phenotypic evolution.

A foundational idea of evo-devo is that morphological variation is not isotropic, that is, it does not occur in all directions. Instead, some directions of morphological variation are more likely than others from DNA-level variation and these largely depend on development. We argue that this evo-devo perspective should apply not only to morphology but to evolution at all phenotypic levels.

Assessing complexity in hominid dental evolution: Fractal analysis of great ape and human molars.

Objectives: Molar crenulation is defined as the accessory pattern of grooves that appears on the occlusal surface of many mammalian molars. Although frequently used in the characterization of species, this trait is often assessed qualitatively, which poses unavoidable subjective biases. The objective of this study is to quantitatively test the variability in the expression of molar crenulation in primates and its association with molar size and diet.