SYSTEMATIC

BIOLOGY

GERLYN I. ASTROLABIO, MSc

Faculty, Arts and Sciences Department
HOMOLOG
Y
LESSON 6
Pre-Evolutionary
Concepts
 Aristotle
● The use of anatomical features to create his classification
implies comparability between observed features of
organisms (e.g. blooded, egg-laying).
● These similarities among features were organizational and
empirical, and perhaps functional, but implied nothing
about their origins.
 Pierre Belon
● Belon’s comparison
between the skeleton of a
human and bird is striking
not only in its general
aspects but in its specific
aspects as well.
● Belon labeled
corresponding structures
in a way we recognize as
homology today
 E ́tienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
● This positional criterion for structures as variants of the
same “type” is more or less equal to what we now call
homology.
● Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has insisted strongly on the high
importance of relative connection in homologous organs:
the parts may change to almost any extent in form and
size, and yet they always remain connected together in the
same order.
● all vertebrates as
modifications of a
single archetype, a
single form. Vestigial
organs and embryonic
transformations might
serve no functional
purpose, but they
indicated the common
derivation of an
animal from its
archetype.
 Richard Owen
● Owen further recognized both special (between organisms)
and general (within organisms) homology as subtypes. The
latter is usually referred to as serial homology today.
● Serially homologous, when two or more organs or
structures are basically similar to each other in
construction but are modified to perform different
functions,
● Example: bat wing and a whale’s
flipper. Both originated in the
forelimbs of early mammalian
ancestors, but they have undergone
different evolutionary modification
to perform the radically different
tasks of flying and swimming.
 Charles Darwin
● Darwin (1859b) did not redirect or
refine the concept of homology, but
used homology as evidence for and an
explanation of common descent.
● the characters which naturalists
consider as showing true affinity
The principle of homology: The
between any two or more species, are biological relationships (shown by
those which have been inherited from colours) of the bones in the
forelimbs of vertebrates were used
a common parent, and, in so far, all by Charles Darwin as an argument
in favor of evolution.
true classification is genealogical;
 E. Ray Lankester
● Lankester argued that Owen’s term homology should be
replaced by the term homogeny, which would be defined
as characters that ‘have a single representative in a
common ancestor’
 Adolf Remane
● Remane (1952)(translation of Reidl, 1978) proposed six
criteria—three principles:
1. Position—“Homology can be recognized by similar
position in comparable systems of features.”
 Adolf Remane
2. Structure—“Similar structures can be homologized without
reference to similar position, when they agree in numerous
special features. Certainty increases with the degree of
complication and of agreement in the structures compared.”
 Adolf Remane
3. Transition—“Even dissimilar structures of different position
can be regarded as homologous if transitional forms between
them can be proved so that in considering two neighboring
forms, the conditions under (1) and (2) are fulfilled. The
transitional forms can be taken from ontogeny of the structure or
can be true systematically intermediate forms.”
Three auxiliary:
1. General conjunction—“Even simple structures can be
regarded as homologous when they occur in a great number of
adjacent species.”
2. Special conjunction—“The probability of the homology of
simple structures increases with the presence of other
similarities, with the same distribution among closely similar
species.”
3. Negative conjunction—“The probability of the homology of
features decreases with the commonness of occurrence of this
feature among species which are not certainly related.”
 Four Types of Homology

Evolutionary
Classical view
Taxonomy

Phenetic Homology Cladistic Homology

Classical View
● This view, exemplified by Haas and Simpson (1946) and

Boyden (1973), is basically that of Owen: “The same organ

in different animals under every variety of form and
function.” As such it suffers from the imprecise nature of
Owen’s idea of “same” and “essential.” The concept has
intuitive appeal, but provides no means to exclude or include
alternate hypotheses of homology.
● Evolutionary Taxonomy school employed the Remane-type
rationale of position, structure, and transformation.
Similarity was the only test, yet not all similarities were
accepted as homologies since “analogies” (due to conver-
gence) were differentiated from homologues as evolutionary
similarities.
Phenetic homology
● an “operational” homology definition was used by
pheneticists Sokal and Sneath (1963); Jardin (1970) and
Sneath and Sokal (1973). By avoiding causative, process
statements, in principle all “similarities” could be treated
as homologies, whether primitive or derived.
● In practice, however, “compositional and structural
correspondence” were used to select those similarities
useful for analysis.
Phenetics
Cladistic Homology
● “Two (or more) characters are said to be homologous if

they are transformation stages of the same original

character present in the ancestor of the taxa which display
the characters.” This differs from the classical ideas of
similarity, since the features need not be similar in any
particular way, only have common origins.
 LEVEL OF HOMOLOGY

1 3
STRUCTURAL 2 MOLECULAR
Comparative The same DNA
Anatomy DEVELOPMENTAL sequence
Embryo
formation
 Types of Homology
Structural Homologies, are part of the study of
comparative anatomy.
Comparative anatomy involves the study of the similarities
and differences in the anatomical structures of different
species.
 Types of Homology
Molecular homologies are similarities between species on
the molecular level. Identifying molecular homologies
involves looking at the DNA of different species and
comparing them to each other.
If the same DNA sequences are found in different species,
that means they probably came from a common ancestor.
 Types of Homology
Developmental homology refers to a comparison between
the embryos of different species.
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