Integrating Evolution and Development: From Theory to Practice

This volume joins a growing list of books, monographs, and proceedings from scientific meetings that attempt to consolidate the wide spectrum of approaches emphasizing the role of development in evolution into a coherent and productive synthesis, often called evo-devo. Evo-devo is seen as a replacement or amendment of the modern synthesis that has dominated the field of evolution since the 1940s and which, as even its architects confessed, was fundamentally incomplete because development remained outside its theoretical framework (Mayr and Provine 1980). As the volume attests, there is now a strong feeling that the time is ripe for the consolidation of evo-devo, and that the field is mature enough so that mapping the theoretical terrain and experimental approaches is both feasible and scientifically productive. Now is an appropriate time to try to weave the strands of reasoning leading to the developmental perspective and offer a synthesis.