miércoles, 5 de septiembre de 2018

Evolution and development of white stripes in Nemo and his cousins - On Biology

Evolution and development of white stripes in Nemo and his cousins - On Biology



On Biology

Pauline Salis, Bruno Frédérich & Vincent Laudet

Pauline achieved her PhD three years ago during which she studied development and cell biology in Drosophila at Marseille (France). During her postdoc, she is studying the development of coral reef fishes in the lab of Prof. Vincent Laudet at the French marine biology station of Banyuls-Sur-Mer. Her research questions how developmental modifications shaped the diversity of color patterns in coral reef fishes during their evolution.

Bruno is fascinated by the beauty of tropical marine waters and started to take an interest in coral reef fish from the age of 12. After a Ph.D. devoted to the ontogeny of damselfishes, he achieved post-docs during which he focused on the morphological evolution of coral reef fishes. Since March 2018, Bruno is developing his research group at the University of Liège (Belgium) where he aims to understand the factors governing diversity in space and time.

Originally a molecular biologist, Vincent started to work on the evolution of developmental mechanisms more than 20 years ago. He uses coral reef fish to study how hormones alter the life cycle of complex organisms in their natural environment. Such a research agenda, in the new field of Eco/Evo/Devo allows integration of knowledge gathered by different and complementary approaches in biology.


Evolution and development of white stripes in Nemo and his cousins

Coral reef fishes are well known for their tremendous diversity of color patterns but, to date, the underlying developmental mechanisms controlling the evolution of this phenotypic diversity are still largely unknown. Vincent Laudet, Pauline Salis and Bruno Frédérich, authors of a new study in BMC Biology, explain how they combined phylogenetic and ontogenetic approaches to reveal the process of color patterns diversification in the iconic clownfishes.

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