How do environmental factors influence life cycles and development? An experimental framework for early‐diverging metazoans

Abstract

Ecological developmental biology (eco-devo) explores the mechanistic relationships between the processes of individual development and environmental factors. Recent studies imply that some of these relationships have deep evolutionary origins, and may even predate the divergences of the simplest extant animals, including cnidarians and sponges. Development of these early diverging metazoans is often sensitive to environmental factors, and these interactions occur in the context of conserved signaling pathways and mechanisms of tissue homeostasis whose detailed molecular logic remain elusive. Efficient methods for transgenesis in cnidarians together with the ease of experimental manipulation in cnidarians and sponges make them ideal models for understanding causal relationships between environmental factors and developmental mechanisms. Here, we identify major questions at the interface between animal evolution and development and outline a road map for research aimed at identifying the mechanisms that link environmental factors to developmental mechanisms in early diverging metazoans.

Back to the Basics: Cnidarians Start to Fire

“…A more practical choice for such studies are cnidarians, a phylum of approximately 11,000 aquatic animals that occupies a strongly supported position as the sister clade of the Bilateria (Figure 1). Cnidarians, which include jellyfishes and polyps and are distinguished by their nematocysts (stinging cells), have long been utilized in laboratories as experimental organisms to address diverse biological questions [16–20]. …”

Coral mass spawning predicted by rapid seasonal rise in ocean temperature

“…As a result, PAR might provide a less reliable cue compared with the rate of SST rise. However, light is thought to be important on shorter timescales: for example, photoreceptors sensitive to the blue spectrum in moonlight are hypothesized to initiate nighttime release of gametes during a particular lunar phase [43].…”

The CARD-CC/Bcl10/paracaspase signaling complex is functionally conserved since the last common ancestor of Planulozoa

“…The ITAMdependent signaling in invertebrates could also be mediated by another class of receptors, as suggested for lamprey (Liu et al 2015). If the RIG-I/CBM or ITAM/Syk/PKC/CBM pathways are shown to be conserved, further insight on the biology and regulation of the CBM complex would not only benefit biomedical research against (auto)immune diseases and cancer (Demeyer et al 2016), but could also impact a wide range of other areas such as mollusk (aqua)culture and environmentally important challenges like the host immunity component of coral bleaching (Vidal-Dupiol et al 2009;Bosch et al 2014). Interestingly, a MALT1 homolog was found to be one of the most significantly upregulated genes in corals after natural bleaching stress (Pinzón et al 2015).…”