Alessandro Minelli, Professor of Zoology at the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy until 2011, is currently serving as Specialty Chief Editor for evolutionary developmental biology for Frontiers in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Minelli was previously Vice-President of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. For several years his research focus was in biological systematics, but in the mid-1990s he moved his interest towards evolutionary developmental biology, the subject of his previous book The Development of Animal Form (Cambridge, 2003). On his retirement, he decided to study plants and write the botanical equivalent to his book on animal evo-devo.