The early studies of evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) come from several sources. Tributaries flowing into Evo-Devo came from such disciplines as embryology, developmental genetics, evolutionary biology, ecology, paleontology, systematics, medical embryology and mathematical modeling. This essay will trace one of the major pathways, that from evolutionary embryology to Evo-Devo and ...

The recent Keystone Symposium on Evolutionary Developmental Biology at Tahoe City in February 2011 provided an opportunity to take stock of where the past three decades have brought this interdisciplinary field. It revealed maturation on several fronts, including increased experimental rigor, the softening of dichotomies that were crucial to its founding and growth, and its growing relevance to...

The integration of concepts from evolutionary developmental biology, such as the homology concept, into developmental psychobiology has great potential. However, evolutionary developmental biology is an attempt to integrate evolutionary and developmental explanation and developmental psychobiology has traditionally been concerned to avoid conflating these two kinds of explanation. This article ...

Developmental disabilities and severe mental illness are costly to the affected individual and frequently to their family as well. Little studied are their nondisabled siblings. Here we examine major life course outcomes (education, employment, and marriage) of these siblings in adulthood using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Our sample comprises 113 individuals with developmental d...

Exercises that employ dynamic living material have proved highly successful at generating interest in science among young students. Developing embryos and larvae are especially well suited for such endeavors, for they can be handled without expensive or elaborate equipment, and their changing nature engages students. Using amphibian embryos, which are relatively large and exhibit profound, easi...

Current technologies give us the ability to enhance and replace developmental biology classes with computer-based resources, often called virtual labs. In the process of using these resources, teachers may be tempted to neglect the simpler technologies and lab bench activities, which can be labor intensive. In this paper, I take a critical look at the role of computer-based materials for the te...

A survey was undertaken to investigate the prevalence of high-functioning pervasive developmental disorder (HFPDD) in a community sample of teenagers and adults aged 13 and above in the city of Sheffield, UK. 112 possible and definite cases were found, of whom 65 (57%) had a previous diagnosis. The detected prevalence of possible or definite HFPDD was found to be 0.24 per 1000 of the population...

Behavioral characteristics of 140 children with developmental dyscalculia (DC) were evaluated using the Child Behavior Checklist. DC children demonstrated more behavior problems than normal children but significantly fewer problems than children psychiatrically referred. DC children had significantly more attentional problems although they had normal levels of anxiety/depression. Significantly ...

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) often seem to possess a narrow repertoire of cognitive strategies. In particular, they have difficulties in learning and internalizing the rules and strategies that other people intuitively use to approach common everyday problems. As a result, they often appear to have organizational, planning, memory and learning difficulties. The articl...

One of the oldest problems in evolutionary biology remains largely unsolved. Which mutations generate evolutionarily relevant phenotypic variation? What kinds of molecular changes do they entail? What are the phenotypic magnitudes, frequencies of origin, and pleiotropic effects of such mutations? How is the genome constructed to allow the observed abundance of phenotypic diversity? Historically...