Although the majority of annotated new genes in a given genome appear to have arisen
from duplication-related mechanisms, recent studies have shown that genes can also …

A central topic in research at the intersection of development and evolution is the origin of
novel traits. Despite progress on understanding how developmental mechanisms underlie …

Butterfly eyespots are beautiful novel traits with an unknown developmental origin. Here we
show that eyespots likely originated via cooption of parts of an ancestral appendage gene …

The vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster is a pivotal model for invertebrate development,
genetics, physiology, neuroscience, and disease. The whole family Drosophilidae, which …

Identifying the molecular origins by which new morphological structures evolve is one of the
long-standing problems in evolutionary biology. To date, vanishingly few examples provide …

Since 1990 the recognition of deep homologies among metazoan developmental processes
and the spread of more mechanistic approaches to developmental biology have led to a …

Taxon-restricted genes make up a considerable proportion of genomes, yet their
contribution to phenotypic evolution is poorly understood. We combined gene expression …

Highlights•Genome-wide and single gene studies have revealed a variety of mechanisms by
which new expression patterns arise.•Studying newly evolved morphologies at the level of …

It is widely accepted that stressful conditions can facilitate evolutionary change. The
mechanisms elucidated thus far accomplish this with a generic increase in heritable …

Understanding the origin of novelty is a key question in evolutionary developmental biology.
In arthropods, the body wall has served as a repeated source of morphological novelty. In …