Extreme environments lead to extreme adaptations. In this series, some of the evolutionary developmental origins of these remarkable adaptations will be addressed. Manuscripts published will focus on organisms living in very hot, cold, dark, or any other extreme condition, and will shed light on how they have come to survive in these inhospitable conditions.
Dr Sylvie Retaux
Diapause is a developmental arrest present in annual killifish, whose eggs are able to survive long periods of desiccation when the temporary ponds they inhabit dry up. Diapause can occur in three different de...
The Mexican tetra (Astyanax mexicanus) has emerged as a good animal model to study the constructive and regressive changes associated with living in cave environments, as both the ancestral sighted morph and the ...
Animals inhabiting the darkness of caves are generally blind and de-pigmented, regardless of the phylum they belong to. Survival in this environment is an enormous challenge, the most obvious being to find foo...
In blind cave-dwelling populations of Astyanax mexicanus, several morphological and behavioral shifts occurred during evolution in caves characterized by total and permanent darkness. Previous studies have shown ...
Extreme environmental conditions can give rise to extreme adaptations. We document growth, sexual maturation and fecundity in two species of African annual fish inhabiting temporary savanna pools.
The Related Article to this article has been published in Nature Protocols 2016 11:nprot.2016.080