EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT EXAM

1. What the principal Cambrian basal arthropod groups, and how might their study be useful to unraveling
the origins of i) euarthropod head segmentation and ii) euarthropod musculature and segmentation


2. Constraint is a term often used to imply restrictions of various kinds in the direction of evolution. What
sources might constrain mechanisms come from?


How valid do you think constraint is as an explanation of major evolutionary patterns?


How might it be overcome?


3. What is the genotype-phenotype mapping problem?
Firstly, a primary area of concern is the so-called genotypephenotype map:
how genetic changes influence morphology (Wagner and Altenberg, 1996;Budd, 1999;
Weiss and Fullerton, 2000). This problem is very far from being solved in most
cases, but until it is, the gearing problem cannot be properly tackled.


Give, with specific examples, examples that show how the mapping problem can be i) many to one; ii) one to
many; iii) many to many.


How might the relationship between the genotype and phenotype evolve through time?


4. Why has the concept of homology proven to be so problematic? Is serial homology a valid concept?
Discuss at least one major attempt to integrate serial and classical homology into a single conceptual
framework.
The first of these is an epistemological problem, and deals with recognizing
the patterns of morphological evolution in the first place. Unless we have some
clear indication of which parts of organisms correspond to parts of other organisms
and which parts do not, then discussing the evolution of these features will be
largely pointless. Since Darwin, the idea of a homologous structure in two organisms
has included descent with modification from the same structure in a common ancestor.
Our humerus is homologous to that of a bird because our last common ancestor a
reptile also possessed a humerus, from which we independently inherited our modern
examples. Comparison between different taxa may thus give us some idea of what sorts
of transformations are involved in morphological diversification. Unfortunately,
such a model does not give us much of a hint about how the homologous relationship
is to be recognized in the first place, and enormous controversy has resulted in the
past. I shall for the rest of this article assume, perhaps optimistically, that this
problem is independent of the others and is solvable.


5. a) Please describe in all necessary steps the experiment you conducted on onychophoran limb
gene expression. Give for each main step an explanation WHY you had to do that particular step. (4p)


b) The experiments ended with the in situ hybridization. Please describe this technique in detail.
Again give a short explanation WHY you did whatever you did (2p)


6. In the zebrafish model system, the function of a gene can be investigated with a morpholino MO-x,
designed to cause miss splicing of the transcript from gene x, give the following results:
low concentration no phenotype
medium concentration pectoral fins do not develop
high concentration neither pectoral fins, nor jaws developed
Describe in detail (illustrate) how you would design and perform experiments to test the specificity of MO-x
and tot test if your observed phenotypes are caused by morpholino off-target effect.


7. What are major morphological characters of the modern birds and how these were shaped in the
evolution of Cretaceous and Jurassic birds.


Give also the example for molecular signaling module involved in developmental of a skeletal character.


8. What are the major morphological differences between living jawless vertebrates and the jawed
vertebrates? (Note: here you only need to consider the types of hard tissues that each group has, but you will
be rewarded by listing other morphological differences correctly).


How can fossils contribute to our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate hard tissues?


9. a) What information relating to the organism and/or its environment can be reflected by the long-
bone histological record? You can present your answer as a diagram.


b) You want to know a bit more about the palaeobiology of the Triassic tetrapod Gerrothorax. You
have made two mid-shaft thin sections of two specimens coming from two different localities in
Germany. They are both humeri. Can you describe these histological sections? What palaeobiological
information can these bones provide?