Background information In this lab, you will test the hypothesisthat the evolution of skull shape within the human lineage tookplace largely by changing the timing of events in development froma chimpanzee-like ancestor. The change in shape during development(that is, allometry) is a source of heritable variation that canlead to adaptive evolution. In this lab, we’re focusing on howmorphology (the shape of an organism) changes through time insteadof focusing on how genes change through time. However, these twobiological disciplines are united in the study of evolutionarydevelopment, or “evo-devo†for short (Carroll 2005). Growth fromfertilized egg (zygote) to adult involves a host of complexinteractions among genes, molecules, and tissues. Subtlealterations in the timing of gene expression, especially forregulatory genes, can have far-reaching consequences that result indifferent adult morphology (Carroll 2005).
1. Read the of the above information, and then paraphrase theprimary hypothesis you will test in this lab. Next, represent thishypothesis as a schematic (concept map), by drawing what you thinkthe ancestral skull looked like and how the shape of the skullevolved in descendent species.
