The evolutionary origin of flatfish asymmetry

Matt Friedman ()
Additional contact information
Matt Friedman: Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, 1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

Nature, 2008, vol. 454, issue 7201, 209-212

Abstract: Evolution: How flatfish see eye-to-eye The asymmetry of flatfish is an exceptional morphological specialization that arises in development: starting from a symmetrical larva/juvenile, the skull is remodelled so that one eye migrates over the top of the skull to sit next to its fellow on one (or other) side of the animal. The evolutionary origins of this arrangement have been unclear. Matt Friedman re-examined Eocene (47-million-year-old) fossils of the fish Amphistium and describes a new genus that represents the most primitive flatfish known. In these fish, the migrating eye never gets further than the dorsal midline, even in fully adult fishes. This is a graphic example of a transitional form spotted in the fossil record, confirming that the evolution of the specialized flatfish bodyplan was a gradual process.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07108 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:454:y:2008:i:7201:d:10.1038_nature07108

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature07108

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().