Evolution and Developmental Diversity of Skin Spines in Pufferfishes

Eda signaling may play a role in the evolutionary transition from spinoid scale to spine. Furthermore, shifts in expression of signaling pathways (such as Bmp) at various stages of appendage development have likely produced tremendous diversity in patterning and unit morphology in this group of derived teleost fishes. Future work on comparative expression patterns or transcriptome analyses may uncover a network of genes related to scale formation that can be directly compared with developing spines, potentially highlighting the genes lost or gained during the scale-to-spine transition.