Evolution Of Morphological Integration: Developmental Accommodation Of Stress-induced Variation
- Date:
- August 17, 2005
- Source:
- University of Chicago Press Journals
- Summary:
- In an article in the September issue of The American Naturalist, Alexander V. Badyaev (University of Arizona) and colleagues show that complexity and cohesiveness of foraging structures of shrews enables accommodation of stress-induced developmental abnormalities in individual components of morphological complexes. Such developmental compensation and accommodation not only allow shrews growing under stressful environments to maintain locally adaptive foraging morphology, but also provide a mechanism for stress-induced evolutionary change.
- Share:
Stress is a major factor in evolution, but for stress-inducedmodifications to have evolutionary importance they have to be inheritedand persist in a sufficient number of individuals within a population.This requires an organism to survive stress and reproduce at leastonce; thus stress-induced variation has to be accommodated by anorganism without much reduction in its functionality. How is suchaccommodation accomplished?
In an article in the September issue of The American Naturalist,Alexander V. Badyaev (University of Arizona) and colleagues show thatcomplexity and cohesiveness of foraging structures of shrews enablesaccommodation of stress-induced developmental abnormalities inindividual components of morphological complexes. Such developmentalcompensation and accommodation not only allow shrews growing understressful environments to maintain locally adaptive foragingmorphology, but also provide a mechanism for stress-inducedevolutionary change.
Sponsored by the AmericanSociety of Naturalists, The American Naturalist is a leading journal inthe fields of ecology and evolutionary biology and animal behavior. Formore information, please see our website: www.journals.uchicago.edu/AN
Alexander V. Badyaev (University of Arizona), Kerry R. Foresman(University of Montana), and Rebecca L. Young (University of Arizona),"Evolution of morphological integration: Developmental accommodation ofstress-induced variation" 166:3 September 2005.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Cite This Page: