Waltzing with Asymmetry

TLDR

Abstract

R emarkably few things escaped Aristotle's attention, or Darwin's for that matter. Aristotle noted regular patterns of bilateral asvmmetries in animals: the Caribi -and in the Carcini [rrue crabs] the fight claw is invariably larger and serooger . In the Astaci Icrayfish aud lobstersj alane ie is a matter of chance wh ich daw is the larger, and chis in euher sex (Herrick 1909, p. 149). Darwin too had a hunch abaut asymmetries while wresding wich rnechanisms of inheritanee. He believed that deviations from the Iaw of symmetry (i.e., anomalous asymmetries in llOrmally symmetrical organisms) would not be inherited, but the meager evidence ae his disposal, deaHng mainly with gross defonnities, seemed to suggest otherwise (Palmer and Strobeck 1986). And so the history of the literature on morphological asymmetry progressed, fitfully and capriciously, from anecdotal observations and entertaining staries to extensive compilations of canspicuous asymmecrie5 (Ludwig 1932, Neville 1976). Morphological asymmetries were but one of nature's many curlosities.