90-Minute Symposium

090-007

Animal Body Plan Evolution of Development

Session Start/End Time:

Saturday, Feb 14, 2009, 10:30 AM -12:00 PM

HRC Regency A

Ground-breaking studies over the past 15 years in the new and cross-disciplinary field of "EvoDevo" have uncovered unprecedented and previously unrecognized commonality in the basic mechanisms for body-plan organization of morphologically diverse animals -- similar molecular and genetic networks underlie the development of body form. Recent studies on a wide range of species, including some at critical positions in the tree of life and others representing the breadth of animal diversity, have begun to explain how different body plans evolved and how morphological novelties (e.g., eyespots in butterfly wings, specialized legs in lobsters, a centralized nervous system) have arisen. Scientists are poised to understand key transitions in animal body plan evolution, making sense of various forms, understanding how different animal groups arose, and seeing how key molecules and cell types have been re-deployed to generate diversity. The results have implications beyond the understanding of the natural world. Many diseases and birth defects are now directly attributable to the failure of molecular genetic networks during the development of the human body plan. This symposium spotlights the latest data and new insights into the origins of animal body plans along two general themes: the early evolution of animal body-axes and the origins of the "bilaterian" (bilaterally-symmetric) phyla; and the diversification of these bilaterian phyla into the wealth of body types present today.

Organized by:

Christopher J Lowe, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Presentations:

  Symposium Organizer--Christopher J. Lowe, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

  Crab Claws and Snail Shells: Evolution in Action--Nipam Patel, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

  Body Plan Transitions at the Base of the Metazoa--Mark Q. Martindale, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI

  Superficial Insights into Brain Evolution: Skin Brains and the Origins of Vertebrates--Christopher J. Lowe, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL