Old Questions and Young Approaches to Animal Evolution

​José M. Martín-Durán is a European Research Council Starting Grant Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. He obtained his PhD in Genetics from the University of Barcelona, where he studied the embryonic development of planarian flatworms. After pursuing postdoctoral research at the Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen, he moved to Queen Mary University of London to establish a laboratory that combines his interests in developmental biology, animal evolution, and marine biodiversity. His lab applies genomic, epigenetic, and more classical developmental approaches to study the natural diversity in early embryogenesis found in spiralian lineages.Bruno C. Vellutini is an EMBO Fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. He obtained his MSc in Zoology from the University of São Paulo, and his PhD in Molecular and Computational Biology from the University of Bergen, where he investigated the evolution of larval forms in marine invertebrates. His research focuses on understanding how changes in embryogenesis are connected to the evolution of animal morphology. Currently, he is combining genetic and live-imaging techniques to reveal the mechanisms that govern tissue morphogenesis in the fruit fly embryo.

• Part 1. Animal Origins.- Chapter 1. 1. The protistan cellular and genomic roots of animal multicellularity.- Chapter 2. Exceptionally preserved Cambrian fossils in the genomic era.- Part 2. The developmental view of animal evolution.- Chapter 3. Comparative embryology as a way to understand evolution.- Chapter 4. How do developmental programs evolve?.- Chapter 5. How do morphological novelties evolve? Novel approaches to define novel morphologies.- Chapter 6. Germ layer evolution: using novel approaches to address a classic evolutionary embryological problem.- Chapter 7. Origin and evolution of nervous systems.- Part 3. The genomic view of animal evolution.- Chapter 8. Boosting macroevolution: genomic changes triggering qualitative expansions of regulatory potential.- Chapter 9. How do gene networks promote morphological evolution?.- Part 4. Theoretical approaches to animal evolution.-  Chapter 10. How does modularity in the genotype-phenotype map shape development and evolution?.- Chapter 11. Can we compute the embryo?.- Chapter 12. What is a biological individual?.

“Excellent examples discussed throughout the book … . Overall, this edited volume offers an enjoyable read and is a timely contribution for a wide range of evolutionary biologists interested in tackling and revisiting the many “big picture” questions in animal evolution.” (Joshua R. York, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 96 (4), December, 2021)