The timing of development (original) (raw)

Abstract

The issue of whether and how a gathering of developmental and evolutionary explanations should be achieved raises difficulties. In a certain way, one could consider that “problems concerned with the orderly development of the individual are unrelated to those of the evolution of organisms through time” (Wallace 1986). Since development can be depicted as the trajectory of an individual from the zygote stage to the adult stage, in a process in time, at least its timescale appears clearly decoupled from the evolutionary timescales (Hall & Olson 2006). Furthermore, the developmental process may include various processes at distinct time and space scales (molecular, cellular, etc.), which can be further analyzed on its own. I suggest that by focusing on the character instead of the developmental stage (de Beer 1940), developmental biology has lost the temporal dimension of its process. I argue that a way to reassess the importance of time in developmental process (in order maybe to achieve afterwards a gathering of development and evolution) is to addresses the specifics of the developmental timing, its specificities and its relation to other time scales. This would, first, offer a clarification of the separation between evolutionary and developmental timescales and then show how a developmental theory might integrate the various processes at distinct space and time scales that I identify.

Antonine Nicoglou hasn't uploaded this conference presentation.

Let Antonine know you want this conference presentation to be uploaded.

Ask for this conference presentation to be uploaded.