Abstract
We review the importance of developmental mechanisms in animals in constraining evolutionary changes. We first discuss the importance of time scales at which such constraints are relevant and after that focus on near absolute constraints that act on macroevolutionary scales. We could find only a few well-underpinned examples of such near absolute constraints. We discuss three outstanding cases, the ancient metazoan constraint that differentiated cells cannot divide, constraints against changes of phylotypic stages in vertebrates and other higher taxa, and constraints against the evolution of parthenogenesis. These constraints all have major consequences, including many secondary constraints, and they have in common that they are caused by high levels of global developmental interactivity.
The global developmental interactivity almost inevitably causes mutations to have many harmful pleiotropic effects, and thus will be strongly selected against, leading to long-term evolutionary conservation. The discussed developmental constraints have major consequences for evolution and critically restrict regeneration capacity, life-history evolution, and body plan evolution.
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Galis, F., Metz, J.A.J. (2019). A Macroevolutionary Perspective on Developmental Constraints in Animals. In: Nuno de la Rosa, L., Müller, G. (eds) Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33038-9_69-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33038-9_69-1
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