Animal evolution : genomes, fossils, and trees /

"Animal life, now and over the past half billion years, is incredibly diverse. Describing and understanding the evolution of this diversity of body plans - from vertebrates such as humans and fish to the numerous invertebrate groups including sponges, insects, molluscs, and the many groups of w...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Other Authors: Telford, Maximilian J., Littlewood, D. T. J. (D. Timothy J.), 1961-
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.
Series:Oxford biology.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • I. Origins of animals
  • 1. The earliest fossil record of the animals and its significance
  • 2. The Ediacaran emergence of bilaterians: congruence between the genetic and the geologic fossil records
  • 3. Genomic, phylogenetic, and cell biological insights into metazoan origins
  • 4. The mouth, the anus and the blastopore - open questions about questionable openings
  • II. The Bilateria
  • 5. Metazoan body plan origins: the larval revolution
  • 6. Assembling the spiralian tree of life
  • 7. The evolution of nervous system centralization
  • 8. The origins and evolution of the Ecdysozoa
  • 9. Deciphering deuterostome phylogeny: molecular, morphological and palaeontological perspectives
  • 10. Molecular genetic insights into deuterostome evolution from the direct-developing hemichordate Saccoglossus kowalevskii
  • III. Themes and Perspectives
  • 11. Invertebrate Problematica: kinds, causes, and solutions
  • 12. Improvement of molecular phylogenetic inference and the phylogeny of Bilateria
  • 13. Beyond linear sequence comparisons: the use of genome-level characters for phylogenetic reconstruction
  • 14. The animal in the genome: comparative genomics and evolution
  • 15. MicroRNAs and metazoan phylogeny: big trees from little genes
  • 16. The evolution of developmental gene networks: lessons from comparative studies on holometabolous insects
  • 17. Conserved developmental processes and the evolution of novel traits: wounds, embryos, veins, and butterfly eyespots
  • 18. Reassembling animal evolution: a four-dimensional puzzle.