This book describes how the field of evolutionary development biology has shaped our understanding how animals evolve. The idea of animal form can be the creation of two processes; development and evolution. Part one mainly talks about embryos and evolution. To begin naturalist first approach is to sort the very large variety of animals into groups. For an example vertebrate which include; fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Another group is arthropods which include; insects, crustaceans, arachnids and more. There are many differences between the two groups. The key is to remember there are to processes to every animal form (development from an egg and evolution from its ancestors). You must understand the two processes and their …show more content…
The most amazing discovery of Evo Devo is the origin of genes for building all different kinds of animals. Carroll was amazed that many animal forms had the same or very similar tool kit proteins. The discovery of similar tool kit revealed all different kinds of connections between animal groups. Another extraordinary discovery is that organ and structures such as; eyes, limbs, and hearts all have mutual genetic ingredients. The history of tool kits shows that the invention of these genes was not the cause of evolution. Scientist believe that genetic tool kits are ecologically driven. Innovation is shown through all of these different animal groups by teaching “old genes new tricks”, like how birds or bats did not invent the “wing” gene, or butterflies a “spot” gene. Multifunctional tool kits genes are vital to innovation, it is the start of deployment at different times and places. Since the protein is identically the same its different functions has to do with actions on different switches/contexts. In arthropods they saw the changing of functions such as “feeding to one of a battery of appendages freed other appendages to become specialized for walking. Swimming, or other activities”. Evo Devo has strengthened the understandings of evolution from Darwin’s original ideas, and has produced new evidence …show more content…
Carroll, did a very nice job of explaining all the information, and making complicated ideas easy to understand. I thought some chapters were hanged on too long, which made the book not very interesting at times. He explained how complex and how much we do know and do not know about evolution, which surprised me a lot. I thought the illustrations in the book, helped a ton to explain his idea better. Also it helped me since I am a visual learner. I personally enjoyed part one of the book much better than part two, because of how much it explained how animals developed body parts. While the second part focused most on all the more scientific terms and different types of scientist thoughts, which just was not as exciting. In conclusion, this was pretty good book, very well written, just a bit too long and over dramatic for my taste. I do recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about evolution or