This volume presents contrasting views on how to assess developmental instability as well as on the relationship of instability to genotypic factors and the action of natural and sexual selection.
Part 1 The genetic basis of developmental stability: Relationships between stability, heterozygosity and genomic coadaptation; G.M. Clarke. Does heterozygosity promote the symmetry of common white leg markings in the Arabian horse? C.M. Woolf. Associative overdominance - the joint effects of inbreeding and linkage disequilibrium; E. Zouros. Enzyme heterozygosity, metabolism, and development stability; J.B. Mitton. Modification of developmental instability and fitness - Malathion resistance in the Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina; J.A. McKenzie, K. O'Farrell. Nonlinear growth dynamics and the origin of fluctuating asymmetry; J.M. Emlen, et al; Developmental stability in plants - Symmetries, stress and epigenesis; D.C. Freeman, et al; Antisymmetry, directional asymmetry and chaotic morphogenesis; J.H. Graham, et al; Morphological integration of fluctuating asymmetry in the mouse mandible; L. Leamy. Relationship between fluctuating asymmetry, morphological modality and heterozygosity in an elderly Israeli population; G. Livshits, P.E. Smouse. Shaping intraspecific variation - development, ecology and the evolution of morphology and life history variation in tiger salamanders; J.P. Collins, et al; Persistence of subtle departures from symmetry over multiple molts in individual brachyuran crabs - Relevance to developmental stability; A.K. Chippindale, A.R. Palmer. Bilateral variation and the evolutionary origin of macrosopic asymmetries; A.R. Palmer, et al; Evolution, developmental instability and the theory of acquisition; J.A. Kieser. Appearance, fixation and stabilization of environmentally induced phenotypic changes as a microevolutionary event; V.M. Zakharov. Parental age and developmental stability in Drosophila melanogaster; J. Wakefield, et al; Developmental variability and the limits of adaptation - interactions with stress; P.A. Parsons. Parasites increase fluctuating asymmetry of male Drosophila nigrospiracula - implications for sexual selection; M. Polak. Fluctuating asymmetry and sexual selection - A.P. Moller, A. Pomiankowski. Developmental origins of variation in human hand preference; R.A. Yeo, S.W. Gangestad. Behavioural phenodeviance - a Lerneresque conjectures; T.A. Markow, I.I. Gottesman. Minor anomalies - diagnostic clues to aberrant human morphogenesis; H.E. Hoyne.