Development Strategies and Biodiversity

David Costantini is Professor at Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. His research combines studies of mechanisms and functions to understand the causes and consequences of phenotypic variation in animals. He authored 152 publications, including two books as author. He was the recipient of the International Prize for a scholar of Organism Evolutionary Zoology issued from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2013. He has been included in the list of top 1% of the most-cited scientists across all scientific fields created by the University of Stanford in 2019.Valeria Marasco's research focuses on proximate factors underlying the effects of changing environmental conditions on phenotypic flexibility and life-history strategies with an emphasis on early life effects. Since 2017, she works at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Comparative Behavioural Research (Vetmeduni Vienna, Austria) as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. She was initially funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2017-2019) and currently by a Lise Meitner FWF Fellowship.

• Part I. Evolutionary Meaning of Development: How and Why Early Life Experience Generate Diversity.- Chapter 1. More than Fifty Shades of Epigenetics for the Study of Early in Life Effects in Medicine, Ecology and Evolution.- Chapter 2. For Better or Worse: Benefits and Costs of Transgenerational Plasticity and the Transhormesis Hypothesis.- Chapter 3. Adaptive Meaning of Early Life Experience in Species that Go Through Metamorphosis.- Part II. Endogenous Mechanisms Underlying the Interactions Between the Individual and Its Early-Life Environment.- Chapter 4. Early-Life Stress Drives the Molecular Mechanisms Shaping the Adult Phenotype.- Chapter 5. Environmental Conditions in Early Life, Host Defenses and Disease in Late Life.- Chapter 6. Early Life Nutrition and the Programming of the Phenotype.- Part III. Anthropocene Opens New Horizons to Reveal the Adaptive Meaning of Developmental Plasticity.- Chapter 7. Adaptive and Maladaptive Consequences of LarvalStressors for Metamorphic and Postmetamorphic Traits and Fitness.- Chapter 8. Plastic Aliens: Developmental Plasticity and the Spread of Invasive Species.- Chapter 9. Consequences of Developmental Exposure to Pollution: Importance of Stress-Coping Mechanisms.

“This volume explores a variety of case studies around a small set of themes. The most significant feature of this book concerns how it brings together issues in developmental biology to the Anthropocene. It serves as a call for better integration of the study of development alongside evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation biology. It is also a fascinating examination of how small-scale processes such as development can affect large-scale biological diversity.” (Jay Odenbaugh, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 98 (3), September, 2023)