Question

Developmental Biology has made substantial contributions to the field of Evolutionary Biology, providing tools that allow us to mechanistically study Darwin’s concept of “Descent with Modification”. This combination of Developmental and Evolutionary Biology has become its own discipline, Evo-Devo. The phenomena of heterotopy, heterochrony, and heterometry can combine in a variety of ways to bring about generational variation in a species that can, in conjunction with natural selection, result in evolutionary changes. “Darwin’s Finches” is an example of this. Provide and Evo-Devo description of how an animal such as a hippopotamus might have given rise, over many generations, to animals like whales and dolphins.

Answer 1

Evo devo- Development is the process through which an embryo becomes an adult organism and eventually dies. Through development, an organism's genotype is expressed as a phenotype, exposing genes to the action of natural selection. Studies of development are important to evolutionary biology for several reasons. Evolutionary developmental biology is that part of biology concerned with how changes in embryonic development during single generations relate to evolutionary changes that occur between generations. Charles Darwin argued for the importance development in understanding evolution.

Both hippos and whales evolved from four legged, even toed,, hoofed, ancestors that lived on land about 50 million years ago.

Until 1909, naturalists grouped hippos with pigs, based on molar patterns. Several lines of evidence, first from blood proteins, then from molecular systematics and DNA and the fossil record, show that their closest living relatives are cetaceans- whales, dolphins and porpoises.