Cracraft Joel
Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, New York 10027, USA.
Zoology (Jena). 2005;108(4):345-56. doi: 10.1016/j.zool.2005.09.003. Epub 2005 Oct 11.
The concept of homology continues to attract more and more commentary. In systematic and evolutionary biology the meaning of homology as synapomorphic similarity inherited from a common ancestor has gained wide acceptance over the last three or four decades. In recent years, however, developmental biologists, in particular, have argued for a new approach to, and new definition for, homology that revolves around the desire to make it more process-oriented and more mechanistic. These efforts raise questions about the relationship between developmental and evolutionary biology as well as how the evolution of development is to be studied. It is argued in this paper that this new approach to homology seemingly decouples developmental biology from the study of the evolution of development rather than to facilitate that study. In contrast, applying the notion of historical, phylogenetic homology to developmental data is inherently comparative and therefore evolutionary.
同源性的概念持续吸引着越来越多的评论。在系统生物学和进化生物学中，同源性作为从共同祖先遗传而来的共源同形相似性的含义，在过去三四十年里已获得广泛认可。然而，近年来，尤其是发育生物学家主张对同源性采用一种新方法并给出新定义，这种新方法和新定义围绕着使其更注重过程和更具机制性的愿望展开。这些努力引发了关于发育生物学与进化生物学之间关系的问题，以及如何研究发育的进化。本文认为，这种同源性的新方法看似使发育生物学与发育进化研究脱钩，而非促进该研究。相比之下，将历史的、系统发育同源性的概念应用于发育数据本质上是具有比较性的，因此也是进化性的。
