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Introduction: Young Approaches to Animal Evolution

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Old Questions and Young Approaches to Animal Evolution

Part of the book series: Fascinating Life Sciences ((FLS))

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Abstract

Animals are fascinating in many ways. For centuries scientists have tried to understand animal evolution. How did animals first evolve? How are they related to one another? How is the genotype—the genetic information contained in their DNA—translated into form and function? How do embryonic cells build tissues and organs? What is the biological basis for animal diversity? This book, which stems from the symposium “Old questions, young approaches” that we organised during the sixth meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, aims to capture how technical and conceptual advances in biology are providing a fresh view into these long-standing questions.

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Acknowledgements

Our first thanks go to Verena Penning, who proposed us to transform the spirit of the symposium “Old questions, young approaches” into this book back in 2016. Along the way, this book also became the means to reflect the voice and thoughts of a generation of researchers—and friends—that “co-evolved” scientifically together. We would like to thank them all for their enthusiasm and the best efforts put into their contributions. Some other colleagues and friends were so kind as to read and review chapters of this book. These are Jon Bråte (University of Oslo), Germán Reig and Carmen Gloria Lemus (University of Chile), Deirdre Lyons (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego), Marta Iglesias (University of Bergen), Ignacio Maeso (Centro Andaluz de Biología del Desarrollo), Juan Pascual-Anaya (RIKEN CPR), Eduardo Zattara (Universidad Nacional del Comahue), Adam G. Jones (University of Idaho), Thomas F. Hansen (University of Oslo), Tamar Zipory (UC Davis), Berta Verd (University of Cambridge), Stefan Hoehme (University of Leipzig), and other anonymous reviewers. Many thanks to all of them.

We hope that by editing this book, we managed to deliver a comprehensive and updated picture of animal evolutionary developmental biology that can serve both as a first step into this fascinating field and as an inspiring source for new innovative studies in animal evolution.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    José M. Martín-Durán

  2. Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

    Bruno C. Vellutini

Authors
  1. José M. Martín-Durán
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  2. Bruno C. Vellutini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to José M. Martín-Durán .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    José M. Martín-Durán

  2. Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

    Bruno C. Vellutini

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Martín-Durán, J.M., Vellutini, B.C. (2019). Introduction: Young Approaches to Animal Evolution. In: Martín-Durán, J., Vellutini, B. (eds) Old Questions and Young Approaches to Animal Evolution. Fascinating Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18202-1_1

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