Editorial |
Corresponding author: Ingmar Werneburg ( ingmar.werneburg@senckenberg.de ) Corresponding author: Irina Ruf ( irina.ruf@senckenberg.de ) Academic editor: Uwe Fritz
© 2022 Ingmar Werneburg, Irina Ruf.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Werneburg I, Ruf I (2022) Vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte — A Festschrift on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Maier, Tübingen. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 1125-1136. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e94711
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Following the traditional and holistic concept of Vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte, Wolfgang Maier studied different aspects of vertebrate morphology, including dentition, the locomotor apparatus, nasal and ear regions. His work comprises investigations on pre- to postnatal stages of extant species as well as fossils and is mainly based on histological serial sections, but also on µCT data in recent years. This resulted in an integrative research agenda on the evolutionary biology of mammals and other vertebrates. Most of his studies are designed around the interrelationship of ontogenetic and functional adaptations and evolutionary transformations. The present collection in Vertebrate Zoology collates a series of research articles related to and in honor of Wolfgang Maier’s work. Invited colleagues of Maier provide current insights to their own research, in many cases inspired by his scholarship, ranging from mammalian to reptilian and fish comparative anatomy. In total, this volume contains 19 publications. They apply modern and traditional techniques to investigate the diversity of biological form. In so doing, they integrate traditional conceptual frameworks from the earliest days of morphological research more than two centuries ago.
Comparative anatomy (morphology), history of science, holistic organism concept, Mammalia, Vertebrata
There is a direct line from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832, Weimar) and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840, Göttingen) to Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765–1844, Tübingen), Karl Mayer (1787–1865, Bonn), Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858, Berlin), Albert von Kölliker (1817–1905, Würzburg), Carl Gegenbaur (1826–1903, Jena, Heidelberg), Ernst Göppert (1866–1945, Heidelberg, Marburg), Dietrich Starck (1908–2001, Frankfurt am Main), and finally to Wolfgang Maier (*1942, Frankfurt am Main, Tübingen) as well as to most other present-day German comparative anatomists (https://academictree.org/evolution/tree.php?pid=776240, accessed October 25th, 2022). This academic tree of life, however, is merely a random construct neglecting the complexity of influences on academic careers, including many other teachers, individual scientific discoveries, personal fates, and philosophical outlooks, not to mention the Zeitgeist which shaped these researchers in many different ways. Their research spans idealistic to cladistic approaches to tackle anatomical diversity. Along the way, many scholars often dissociated from their supervisors.
Nevertheless, a holistic view of nature is a common theme in German morphology up to this day. It is basically an integrated view that takes into account not only adult anatomy (zoology and paleontology), but also embryology to formulate hypotheses on evolutionary changes. One of Gegenbaur’s students, Max Fürbringer (1846–1920, Jena), framed this approach as follows: “The question on the origin of mammals can only be solved by an exact comparative-anatomical and comparative-ontogenetic treatment with thorough consideration of the paleontological forms, and of course this comparison must be carried out on a sound morphological basis, whereby the homogeneity [i.e., homology] has to be determined with the effort of all the tools available to our research and are to be sharply distinguished from the analogies and isotimies. Reliable taxonomic results can only be expected with morphological materials obtained in this way.”
In personal discussions, Wolfgang Maier and his students use the term Vergleichende (= Comparative) Entwicklungsgeschichte. A direct English translation of Entwicklungsgeschichte is difficult because the German word “Entwicklung“ comprises ‘embryological‘ and ‘evolutionary‘ change in one word. A literal translation as ‘comparative embryological and evolutionary history‘ implies a separation between “embryological” and “evolutionary” which is less pronounced in German. Although correct, an English translation as ’comparative ontogeny‘ on the other hand shifts the emphasis to the embryological aspect, because postnatal life is commonly (but erroneously) recognized as a static process by many researchers (as we have personally experienced in many peer review debates). Entwicklungsgeschichte, however, implies an integrated epistemological approach from the very beginning, giving neither embryology nor adult anatomy a certain rank in the actual morphological observation in evolutionary research. A simple translation as “development” would be too vague.
In the 19th century the now antiquated term “Entwickelung“ (with an additional “e” in the middle) was used instead of “Entwicklung“. The old spelling preserved the historical preformistic understanding of embryology in which the embryo is unfolding (“ent-/auswickeln”) toward adult anatomy, a view that was clearly falsified in terms of natural science methodology (
With recent scientific developments leaving the merely descriptive anatomy of the 19th century behind, functional, genetic, and epigenetic aspects were also taken into consideration to formulate a refined version of the holistic view on evolution (e.g.,
Holistic Organism Concept, after
Wolfgang Maier (born August 4th, 1942) studied biology in Tübingen and conducted his doctorate in Frankfurt am Main (Fig.
In the following, we provide an overview of the articles published in this Festschrift. The sections of the Festschrift follow the main chapters of
The first section of his book (
In his book “Der Weg zum Menschen”, Wolfgang
The roots of a holistic Vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte go back in evolutionary form to the famous Jena zoologist Ernst Haeckel. They were also evident among proto-evolutionary naturalists such as Lamarck, Kielmeyer, Meckel, and even Goethe. In the present Festschrift, *
Wolfgang Maier was involved in the discussion of a “technomorph” organism view in the early 1990s, taking progress in physics and evolutionary epistemology into account (Maier and Zoglauer 1994). In our Festschrift, *
In addition to his scientific efforts, Wolfgang Maier influenced hundreds of students in courses on medical human anatomy and embryology (mainly in Frankfurt am Main) and comparative anatomy of animals (mainly in Tübingen). He was always dedicated to teaching and actually started his own study in Tübingen as teacher trainee. His book “Der Weg zum Menschen” (
In our Festschrift, *
In Tübingen, Wolfgang Maier curates a comprehensive histological collection of mainly perinatal specimens of diverse vertebrate species, predominantly mammals. Dozens of doctoral and undergraduate theses are based on this material and many of them deal with different stages of cranial development and have great value as basic descriptive studies. Most of the material was collected and sectioned at the University of Tübingen and many visitors from all over the world come to this ‘treasure house of embryology’, comparable to the famous Hubrecht-Hill-collection (
The Tübingen embryology collection even houses the late embryo of a coelacanth. This species is relevant to understand water-to-land transition (
A major focus of Wolfgang Maier’s research lays on understanding the origin of mammals from early amniotes and comprehensive knowledge of ‘fish’, ‘amphibian’, and ‘reptilian’ anatomy is necessary for comparison. Together with Detlev Thies (Hannover), he translated
While being head of the zoology department (Ordinarius) in Tübingen, Wolfgang Maier hired several assistants focusing on different major vertebrate taxa (e.g., for fish: Peter Bartsch, Ralf Britz, Sven Gemballa; for birds: Matthias Starck; for mammals: Martin S. Fischer, Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra, Irina Ruf). In this Festschrift, Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra (now Zürich, Switzerland), who has broad interests in vertebrate evolutionary morphology, provides a study on the macroevolutionary and developmental evolution of the turtle carapacial scutes: *
Another study of turtle anatomy concerns the so-called “cartilaginous rider” in the endocasts of the brain cavity. Using the classical approach of Vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte, taking extant adult and fossil specimens as well as embryos into consideration, *
Digging even more into reptilian phylogeny and diving deep into the history of the Tübingen paleontology collection (acronym: GPIT, for the former Geologisch-paläontologisches Institut Tübingen), *
Fossil data are always relevant in the discussion of structural changes through time. Wolfgang Maier contributed to the understanding of the secondary palate in therapsids (Promoschorhynchus, Therocephalia) and provided a new theory on the origin of the soft palate in mammals (
Locomotion and other aspects of functional morphology also were of great interest to Wolfgang Maier. In the gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada), he discovered a separate adductor muscle at the pollex, namely m. flexor pollicis longus (
Also interested in evolution and functional morphology, *
Wolfgang Maier is always interested in identifying homologies of animal structures and states that when “nature discloses itself that way, it is the highest cognition one could receive in life“. For example, he identified cranial ribs and intercentra in turtles which clarified the processes of neck simplification in this taxon (
One of the most recent papers of Maier, published in Vertebrate Zoology and attached as a supplement to this Festschrift, provides an integrative approach to understanding the anatomy and ontogeny of the orbitotemporal region and jaw articulation in shrews (Soricidae
Using a similar integrated approach, in the Festschrift, *
Much of his research Wolfgang Maier has performed on the anatomy and evolution of the nasal cavity in mammals. In the external nasal cartilages of soricids, he discovered that the rostrum can be retracted via a m. retractor proboscidis in a telescope-like mechanism that, by resorption, only develops shortly after birth in postnatal life (
Wolfgang Maier clarified the homologies of different ethmoidal structures in primates (e.g.,
Motivated by Wolfgang Maier’s research on nasal structures, *
*
Wolfgang Maier’s research often deals with the development of the studied structures to detect homologies. The same approach is applied by *
In addition to studies on nasal anatomy, Wolfgang Maier is largely interested in the unique ear anatomy of mammals. For instance, by studying the jaw angle and the skull base of Monodelphis, Wolfgang Maier observed that the postnatal differentiation and ontogenetic translation of the middle ear is in fact a recapitulation of the evolution of this complex. He also provided a functional interpretation of the processus angularis in marsupials (
In a series of papers, Wolfgang Maier has described and identified the systematic relevance of the epitensoric course of the chorda tympani, i.e., the nerve runs dorsal to the attachment site of the m. tensor tympani. It is, together with the fissura petrotympanica (Glaser‘sche Spalte), an apomorphy of Anthropoidea (
The postnatal growth pattern of the middle ear in Monodelphis domestica is studied by *
*
The petrosal bone comprises systematically relevant characters and can provide a deeper understanding of evolutionary transformations of the mammalian ear as demonstrated by *
Many of Wolfgang Maier’s studies concern also the anatomy of teeth and the chewing muscles in mammals. For mole-rats (Bathyergidae), he observed a transitory appearance of a pars infraorbitalis of m. masseter medialis profundus. This finding demonstrated the anatomical hystricomorphy of these animals (
In the Festschrift, based on µCT data, *
Detailed tooth anatomy is important for taxonomic and functional studies of extant and extinct species. *
In addition to the research topics mentioned above, Wolfgang Maier also published observations in primatology and anthropology. Shortly after his doctoral thesis, he conducted research in Brazil and South Africa to study living and extinct primates. For example, he described new fossil skulls of Simopithecus and Parapapio from the Plio-Pleistocene cave deposits of South Africa (
In this research area, the work by *
In his private life, Wolfgang Maier always shows great interest in cultural evolution, philosophy, classical music, and literature. In this regard, the study of *
It has been a pleasure to compile the Festschrift in honor of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Maier, who has given us personally a valuable intellectual connection to the European tradition of holistic research in vertebrate morphology. Inspired by him, Vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte has enabled us to understand how the organism and its anatomical structures are the result of an evolutionary process.
Wolfgang Maier always distinguishes between quantitative patterns vs. qualitative morphological research. These days, there is a bit too much emphasis on quantitative patterns in evolutionary studies. Whereas qualitative research into structure helps to provide hypotheses on rare but exquisite material, the more quantitative approaches are valuable to statistically test larger samples. This Festschrift shows that both approaches should supplement each other to advance our understanding of evolutionary transitions in nature.
We wish to thank all authors for their valuable and inspiring contributions. Special thanks go to the editor-in-chief of Vertebrate Zoology, Uwe Fritz, for enabling this Festschrift and for his enduring support. We are grateful to the very professional journal style editing conducted by Markward Herbert Fischer. IR cordially thanks her former PhD advisor and mentor Wolfgang Maier, who introduced her to the fascinating world of craniogenesis in mammals. In addition to his Tübingen mentor Wolfgang Maier, IW wishes to express his great gratitude to his friend and former PhD advisor Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra. He enabled IW’s first connection to Wolfgang Maier in 2007 (at ICVM in Paris) and maintained our tripartite discussions over all these years. We also kindly thank Robert J. Asher who helped to improve the first version of this editorial manuscript. This study profited from DFG-grant WE 5440/6-1.
Editorial
1. Werneburg I,Ruf I (2022) Vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte– A Festschrift on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Maier, Tübingen. 72: 1125–1136. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e94711
Methodology and the history of biological sciences
2. Werneburg I, Hoßfeld U, Levit GS (2022) Discovery of rare lecture notes from 1866 provides exceptional insights into the conceptualization and visualization of paleontology by Ernst Haeckel. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 577–597. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e84983
3. Drack M, Betz O (2022) A technomorphic conceptualisation of biological ‘constructions’ and their evolution. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 839–855. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e86968
Evolution of animal organisms
4. Staggl MA, Abed-Navandi D, Kriwet J (2022) Cranial morphology of the orectolobiform shark, Chiloscyllium punctatum Müller & Henle, 1838. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 311–370. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e84732
5. Johnston P (2022) The missing anatomy of the living coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae (Smith, 1939). Vertebrate Zoology 72: 513–531. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e84274
6. Ascarrunz E, Sánchez-Villagra MR (2022) The macroevolutionary and developmental evolution of the turtle carapacial scutes. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 29–46. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e76256
7. Werneburg I, Evers SW, Ferreira G (2021) On the “cartilaginous rider” in the endocasts of turtle brain cavities. Vertebrate Zoology 71: 403–418. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.71.e66756
8. Regalado Fernández OR, Werneburg I (2022) A new massopodan sauropodomorph from Trossingen Formation (Germany) hidden as ‘Plateosaurus’ for 100 years in the historical Tübingen collection. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 771–822. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e86348
Evolutionary origin and diversification of mammals
9. Preuschoft H, Krahl A, Werneburg I (2022) From sprawling to parasagittal locomotion in Therapsida: A preliminary study of historically collected museum specimens. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 907–936. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e85989
Selected aspects of head morphology (in mammals)
Particular cartilages and bones
10. Wible JR (2022) The history and homology of the os paradoxum or dumb-bell-shaped bone of the platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus (Mammalia, Monotremata). Vertebrate Zoology 72: 143–158. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e80508
Nasal region
11. Ruf I (2022) The turbinal skeleton of Pentalagus furnessi (Leporidae, Lagomorpha). Vertebrate Zoology 72: 423-432. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e83324
12. Smith TD, Bonar CJ (2022) The nasal cavity in agoutis (Dasyprocta spp.): a micro-computed tomographic and histological study. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 95–113. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e76047
13. Ito K, Kodeara R, Koyasu K, Martinez Q, Koyabu D (2022) The development of nasal turbinal morphology of moles and shrews. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 857–881. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e85466
Ear region
14. Nummela S, Aguirre-Fernández G, Smith KK, Sánchez-Villagra MR (2022) Growth pattern of the middle ear in the gray short-tailed opossum, Monodelphis domestica. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 487–494. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e83544
15. Wirkner M, Heyder K, Ruf I (2022) Comparative morphology and postnatal ontogeny of the bony labyrinth in Pantherinae (Carnivora: Felidae) with special emphasis on the lion. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 883–905. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e82874
16. Schultz JA, Schellhorn R, Skutschas PP, Vitenko DD, Kolchanov VV, Grigoriev DV, Kuzmin IT, Kolosov PN, Lopatin AV, Averianov AO, Martin T (2022) Mammalian petrosal from the Lower Cretaceous high paleo-latitude Teete locality (Yakutia, Eastern Russia). Vertebrate Zoology 72: 159–168. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e78479
Chewing apparatus and dentition
17. McKay CJ, Welbourn-Green C, Seiffert ER, Sallam H, Li J, Kakarala SE, Bennett NC, Asher RJ (2022) Dental development and first premolar homology in placental mammals. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 201–218. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e78234
18. Babot MJ, Rougier GW, García-López DA, Bertelli SB, Herrera CM, Deraco MV, Giannini NP (2022) New mandibular remains of Callistoe (Metatheria, Sparassodonta) reveal unexpected anatomical, functional, and evolutionary aspects of this carnivorous genus. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 469–485. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e82709
Primatology and anthropology
19. Mano N, Wood B, Oladipupo L, Reynolds R, Taylor J, Durham E, Cray JJ, Vinyard C, DeLeon VB, Smith TD (2021) The chondrocranial key: Fetal and perinatal morphogenesis of the sphenoid bone in primates. Vertebrate Zoology 71: 535–558. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.71.e65934
20. Zeller U, Göttert T (2021) Humans, megafauna and landscape structure – Rock engravings from Namibia encourage a comparative approach to central Europe and southern Africa. Vertebrate Zoology 71: 631–643. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.71.e72811
Supplement
21. Maier W, Tröscher A, Ruf I (2022) The orbitotemporal region and the mandibular joint in the skull of shrews (Soricidae, Mammalia). Vertebrate Zoology 72: 1099–1124. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.72.e90840