In: Biology
Background information In this lab, you will test the hypothesis that the evolution of skull shape within the human lineage took place largely by changing the timing of events in development from a chimpanzee-like ancestor. The change in shape during development (that is, allometry) is a source of heritable variation that can lead to adaptive evolution. In this lab, we’re focusing on how morphology (the shape of an organism) changes through time instead of focusing on how genes change through time. However, these two biological disciplines are united in the study of evolutionary development, or “evo-devo” for short (Carroll 2005). Growth from fertilized egg (zygote) to adult involves a host of complex interactions among genes, molecules, and tissues. Subtle alterations in the timing of gene expression, especially for regulatory genes, can have far-reaching consequences that result in different adult morphology (Carroll 2005).
1. Read the of the above information, and then paraphrase the primary hypothesis you will test in this lab. Next, represent this hypothesis as a schematic (concept map), by drawing what you think the ancestral skull looked like and how the shape of the skull evolved in descendent species.