What is it about?
During growth, organisms respond to their environment not only in terms of changes in size and shape but also in terms of timing. Organisms are plastic, meaning they respond differently to various environmental conditions and changes. In order to study the phenotypic plasticity during the development, we reared newly-hatched Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) under different water velocities to study the response of their skeleton. Developmental plasticity was demonstrated in the formation of cartilages (i.e., chondrification) and bones (i.e., ossification). Exercise training has a positive effect on the timing of bone development. Plasticity is documented for the timing of appearance and the timing of transition from cartilage to bone rather than the specific order in which skeletal elements are forming during early growth.
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Why is it important?
This experiment in developmental plasticity demonstrates clearly the effect of exercise training on the development of cartilages and bones in fishes. We also present a new approach to quantify sequences of development,
Perspectives
For the past 10 yrs, I have been working on a series of projects that could be divided into three major axes: (1) paleobiology, (2) evolutionary developmental patterns, and (3) phenotypic plasticity. This paper is integrated in two of my long-terms objectives which are to (1) discover evo-devo patterns and processes in the history of lower vertebrates and (2) to determine the evo-devo basis of phenotypic variation in organismal form and function.
Dr Richard Cloutier
Universite du Quebec a Rimouski
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Dynamic skeletogenesis in fishes: Insight of exercise training on developmental plasticity, Developmental Dynamics, September 2012, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/dvdy.23837.
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