Marine evo-devo: New frontiers from emerging marine model organisms

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Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is a rapidly emerging discipline that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to understand how such processes evolved. This discipline aims to address fundamental questions that are unresolvable either by traditional evolutionary biology or developmental biology alone. Extensive studies that used well-established model organisms (e.g. Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, Danio rerio and Mus musculus) have obtained novelties over the past decades. However, the limited selection of traditional model organisms indicates a large bias in the role of development in evolution. In filling this great knowledge gap, the use of emerging new model organisms with key phylogeny positions and full-spectrum coverage shows great application potential by revolutionizing the evo-devo field to depict the whole history of developmental evolution across the tree of life.

Genomics, transcriptomics, and single-cell technologies have sped up the development of many traditional non-model organisms into new model organisms (e.g. ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi, placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens, ascidian Ciona robusta, Amphioxus and mollusc Patinopecten yessoensis), which has generated many breakthrough findings or new theories. In this symposium, we will be interested in topics covering: development of cutting-edge technologies for evo-devo research particularly in non-model organisms, investigation the micro- and macro-evolution of genomes and developmental mechanisms, as well as evolution of developmental novelties, adaptive plasticity and complex life history.

Symposium co-organizers:
Bo Dong (Ocean University of China),
Shi Wang (Ocean University of China),
Invited speakers:
Shi Wang
Andreas Hejnol
Hiroshi Watanabe

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