title: Mark Q. Martindale: shedding new light on developmental diversity.
abstract: The Saint-Petersburg Society of Naturalists awarded the 2009 "Alexander Kowalevsky Medal" to Mark Q. Martindale, Professor of Organismal Biology at the University of Hawaii and Director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, Honolulu. This international award inaugurated first in 1910 was re-established only in 2001. In memory of Alexander Onufrievich Kowalevsky, it is awarded to outstanding zoologists and embryologists who have made great contributions to the field of embryology and developmental biology from an evolutionary perspective. Mark Q. Martindale has worked on a wide range of animals, mostly marine species, in contrast to many evo-devo researchers who often use a single "well-established" model organism. His work demonstrates how the insights gained by studying less "popular" animal taxa not only complement, but also significantly enrich our knowledge of the evolution of metazoan body plans and of the events that have led to the current animal diversity.
authors.affiliation: Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, Bergen, Norway. andreas.hejnol@sars.uib.no
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hejnol
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001363:Awards and Prizes; D005075:Biological Evolution; D015509:Developmental Biology / Q000266:history*; D004626:Embryology / Q000266:history*; D023281:Genomics; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D008386:Marine Biology / Q000266:history*