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Genetic model organisms have gifted researchers with a breathtakingly detailed understanding of the most intimate aspects of their genomes, cells, and development. And yet there is a problem—model organisms have been selected because they have simple life histories and happily inhabit laboratories. In short, they make a virtue of being boring. But the diversity of the natural world is not fully captured by yeast, flies, or mice. To truly appreciate the variety of biological mechanisms underlying this remarkable diversity, one must study the often inconvenient but fascinating non model organism. Experimental and descriptive approaches in nonmodel organisms have become more tractable with reduced genome-sequencing costs and the transferability of techniques and tools developed in model organisms, elevating some of them from non-model to emerging model organism status.

One area of biology into which …