Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Evol Dev. 2020 Jan;22(1-2):165-180. doi: 10.1111/ede.12310. Epub 2019 Sep 2.
Developmental processes transduce diverse influences during phenotype formation, thereby biasing and structuring amount and type of phenotypic variation available for evolutionary processes to act on. The causes, extent, and consequences of this bias are subject to significant debate. Here we explore the role of developmental bias in contributing to organisms' ability to innovate, to adapt to novel or stressful conditions, and to generate well integrated, resilient phenotypes in the face of perturbations. We focus our inquiry on one taxon, the horned dung beetle genus Onthophagus, and review the role developmental bias might play across several levels of biological organization: (a) gene regulatory networks that pattern specific body regions; (b) plastic developmental mechanisms that coordinate body wide responses to changing environments and; (c) developmental symbioses and niche construction that enable organisms to build teams and to actively modify their own selective environments. We posit that across all these levels developmental bias shapes the way living systems innovate, adapt, and withstand stress, in ways that can alternately limit, bias, or facilitate developmental evolution. We conclude that the structuring contribution of developmental bias in evolution deserves further study to better understand why and how developmental evolution unfolds the way it does.
发育过程在表型形成过程中传递各种影响，从而影响和构建可供进化过程作用的表型变异的数量和类型。这种偏差的原因、程度和后果存在很大争议。在这里，我们探讨了发育偏差在促进生物体创新能力、适应新的或压力环境以及在面对干扰时产生良好整合、有弹性的表型方面的作用。我们将研究重点放在一个分类群上，即角胸粪金龟属（Onthophagus），并回顾了发育偏差可能在几个生物学组织层次上发挥的作用：（a）模式特定身体区域的基因调控网络；（b）协调身体对环境变化的整体反应的可塑性发育机制；（c）发育共生和生态位构建，使生物体能够组建团队并积极改变自己的选择环境。我们假设，在所有这些层次上，发育偏差塑造了生命系统创新、适应和承受压力的方式，可以限制、偏向或促进发育进化。我们得出结论，发育偏差在进化中的结构贡献值得进一步研究，以更好地理解为什么以及如何发育进化会以这种方式展开。
