Understanding Development (Understanding Life)

Developmental biology is seemingly well understood, with development widely accepted as being a series of programmed changes through which an egg turns into an adult organism, or a seed matures into a plant. However, the picture is much more complex than that: is it all genetically controlled or does environment have an influence? Is the final adult stage the target of development and everything else just a build-up to that point? Are developmental strategies the same in plants as in animals? How do we consider development in single-celled organisms? In this concise, engaging volume, Alessandro Minelli, a leading developmental biologist, addresses these key questions. Using familiar examples and easy-to-follow arguments, he offers fresh alternatives to a number of preconceptions and stereotypes, awakening the reader to the disparity of developmental phenomena across all main branches of the tree of life.

Alessandro Minelli is a former Professor of Zoology and, in retirement, a senior scientist at the University of Padova, Italy. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and the Italian Society for Developmental and Cell Biology. He is the author of numerous books on evolutionary and developmental biology, including The Development of Animal Form (Cambridge, 2003), Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Cambridge, 2018) and The Biology of Reproduction (Cambridge, 2019).