In the next decade, our understanding of animal evolution will change more rapidly than at any time in the last century. New fossils, a wealth of molecular data and new approaches to phylogenetic analysis have triggered a resurgence of interest in the history of animal life, and the mechanisms that have generated its present diversity. Comparative morphology, palaeontology, genome sequencing and comparative developmental genetics all have unique contributions to make to this synthesis. We embrace these different disciplines and aim to build bridges between them. Our palaeontological research emphasises the diversification of Palaeozoic vertebrate groups, the origin of tetrapods from fishes, and the recent development of quaternary faunas.
Arthropods form the current focus for work relating the processes of development and evolution.
Projects range from micro-evolutionary studies on closely related species of Drosophila to projects that use conserved genes to study the generation of very different body plans. All of this work is supported by, and contributes to, the collections of the University Museum of Zoology. Professor M Akam Hox genes encode a key family of regulatory proteins that are used by many embryos to tell cells where they lie along the main axis of the body. In arthropods, the Hox genes control the diversification and organisation of segments and segment appendages. Mutations in these genes lead to dramatic homeotic phenotypes, where one body part is replaced by another - for example, an antenna by a leg.