PYI: Ontogeny and Phylogeny of the Tetrapod Skeleton

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Dr. Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas at Austin will devote his time during the five years of this Presidential Young Investigator Award to using phylogenetic systematics to explore the evolution of mammalian ontogeny. This work logically follows from previous research, which analyzed skeletal evolution in the major groups of Mammalia and the closest extinct relatives within Synapsida (early reptilian forms ancestral to true mammals). Nearly 1,000 historic transformations of the skeleton were summarized as a result. It is now possible to refer to this information while examining skeletal development in living mammals. Cladistic methods will be used to analyze skeletal development in selected mammalian and tetrapod species, phylogenetic transformations and sequences of transformations that recapitulate in ontogeny, and disruptions or deletions in transformation sequences. To accomplish these goals, it will be necessary to acquire developmental information from cleared and stained embryos of extant mammal species; serial sections, and images (from nuclear magnetic resonance techniques, from rare or endangered species) will also be processed and incorporated into the data set. The research described above has exceptional potential for generating new data and for syntheses with previous observations to solve long-standing problems in evolutionary biology. In addition, it highlights the importance of systematic biology in supplying a unifying theme to threads from the disparate fields of molecular and developmental biology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology.