Developing an integrated understanding of the evolution of arthropod segmentation using fossils and evo-devo.

ABSTRACT: Segmentation is fundamental to the arthropod body plan. Understanding the evolutionary steps by which arthropods became segmented is being transformed by the integration of data from evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), Cambrian fossils that allow the stepwise acquisition of segmental characters to be traced in the arthropod stem-group, and the incorporation of fossils into an increasingly well-supported phylogenetic framework for extant arthropods based on genomic-scale datasets. Both evo-devo and palaeontology make novel predictions about the evolution of segmentation that serve as testable hypotheses for the other, complementary data source. Fossils underpin such hypotheses as arthropodization originating in a frontal appendage and then being co-opted into other segments, and

SUBMITTER: Chipman AD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6790758 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature