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Received: 30 June 2010 / Revised: 13 September 2010 / Accepted: 14 September 2010 / Published online: 24 September 2010
# Springer-Verlag 2010
L. Olsson (*)
Institut fr Spezielle Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie mit
Phyletischem Museum, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitt,
Erbertstr. 1,
07743 Jena, Germany
e-mail: Lennart.Olsson@uni-jena.de
G. S. Levit
History of Science & Technology Prog.,
University of Kings College,
6350 Coburg Rd,
Halifax, NS B3H 2A1, Canada
G. S. Levit : U. Hofeld
AG Biologiedidaktik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitt,
Bienenhaus, Am Steiger 3,
07743 Jena, Germany
Introduction
[] problems concerned with the orderly development
of the individual are unrelated to those of the evolution
of organisms through time (Wallace 1986, p. 149).
The importance of embryonic development for evolutionary biology has been discussed ever since Charles
Darwin (18091882) and Ernst Haeckel (18341919);
however, Modern Synthesis (Mayr and Provine 1980)
approaches to evolution have often neglected development
or treated it as a black box (Mayr and Provine 1980; Olsson
and Hofeld 2007). Although Wallaces statement cited
above is extreme, mid-twentieth-century mainstream evolutionary biology did not feel much need for an integration
of developmental biology into its theoretical foundations.
The fact that evolutionary questions have been of interest to
some developmental biologists between the era of Darwin
and Haeckel and modern times, i.e., that EvoDevo, as the
field is often called by its practitioners, in fact has a history,
is something that has received little attention. It has even
been claimed that Following a quiescent period of almost a
century, present-day evo-devo erupted out of the discovery
of the homeobox in the 1980s (Arthur 2002, p. 757). It is
the goal of this historical overview to show that the
between Ernst Haeckel and the homeobox period was
anything but quiescent (Olsson et al. 2009). We are helped
by the recent upsurge in interest in the history of EvoDevo.
The history of EvoDevo in the Anglo-American world
has received renewed attention recently as exemplified,
e.g., by the work of Alan Love (e.g. Love 2006, 2009; Love
and Raff 2003; Raff and Love 2004), whose scheme of the
historical development of the relationship between evolution and development is reproduced here as Fig. 1. We have
ourselves concentrated on the history of EvoDevo in the
German- and Russian-speaking lands (Hofeld and Olsson
953
Fig. 1 Historical development of the relationship between evolutionary and developmental biology, as depicted in Love and Raff (2003).
To the left the textbook view that evolutionary biology split up into
Entwickelungsmechanik and evolutionary biology, followed by a
divorce of genetics from experimental embryologygenetics became
a research area in its own right. Later, the new molecular genetics
fused with developmental biology, resulting in the powerful develop-
955
Fig. 3 a Bilaterogastraea, b a
later stage with the temporary
intestine curved over a food
particle, c longitudinal section, d
ventral view, e cross-section, f a
stage where the margins of the
primitive mouth have fused
in the middle part, the
Protocoeloma. From
Jgersten (1955)
(nutrition). 42. The organic individual [] recapitulates through its fast and short individual development the most important of the changes in form,
which the ancestors have gone through during the
slow and long palaeontological development following the rules of inheritance and adaptation (Haeckel
1866, II: 300).
Haeckel clearly realized the problems associated with
this subject (Ulrich 1968; Uschmann 1966). The complete
and faithful recapitulation becomes effaced and shortened
because the ontogenesis always chooses the straighter
road. In addition, the recapitulation becomes counterfeited
and changed through secondary adaptations and is therefore
better the more similar the conditions of existence were,
under which the Bion and its ancestors have developed
(Haeckel 1866, II: 300). In order to describe these problems,
Haeckel invented the concepts Cenogenie (secondary adaptation leading to non-recapitulation) and Palingenie (real
recapitulation). He viewed inheritance and adaptation as the
driving factors of the evolutionary process.
Also, Darwin himself pointed out the importance of
embryology for revealing what he called community of
957
959
961
963
965
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