GASS, Gillian; ROBERT, Jason S.; University of Toronto; Dalhousie University: Development: Always the bridesmaid?

Programmatic statements about evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) promise mutual benefits for evolutionary and developmental biology: the encounter between evolutionary biology and developmental biology, the story goes, will improve both areas of study. But while there are plenty of examples of developmental considerations enhancing evolutionary explanations (as discussed in Robert [2002], for instance), there is little evidence of the reverse. In fact, there is little evidence even of biologists bringing evolutionary considerations to bear on developmental questions and explanations in the first place. So while it is clear that developmental biology helps evolutionists (we’ll provide several examples to show how), it is less clear how evolutionary biology helps or might help developmental biologists. This is not to say that nothing new has been learned about development since the advent of evo-devo, but clearly, the study of development has not benefited from an evolutionary perspective in the same way that the study of evolution has benefited from a developmental perspective. We offer three hypotheses to account for this explanatory asymmetry (each of them is only partially satisfactory). We then query whether explanatory symmetry is worth aiming for in evo-devo (probably not). Finally, we conclude with some thoughts about future prospects in evo-devo.