Constrained evolution of animal embryogenesis

Animals have developed a great variety of morphologies during the course of evolution. Despite this, phylogeny-specific features have sometimes been maintained for hundreds of millions of years, suggesting that there are constraints to morphological evolution. In my talk, I will introduce some of general motivations behind the EvoDevo study and talk particularly about the blank space in morphospaces (Each axis of a morphospace corresponds to a variable describing morphological features). It remains to be seen if these blank areas are caused by impossible developmental pathways. However, computer simulations of embryogenesis, which has been proposed in recent years, may provide a clue to a solution. Finally, I’m going to talk about my research plan based on this.