Evolutionary concepts can benefit both fundamental research and applied research in toxicology (A comment on Brady et al. 2017)

[...]understanding the evolutionary basis of phenotypic plasticity during development provides insight into fundamental mechanisms underlying the developmental origins of adult disease (Gluckman, Hanson, & Beedle, ; Lea, Tung, Archie, & Alberts, ). [...]an evolutionary perspective, which has parallels in the emerging field of Evolutionary Medicine (Nesse & Stearns, ; Stearns, ; Stearns, Nesse, Govindaraju, & Ellison, ; Wells, Nesse, Sear, Johnstone, & Stearns, ), can guide the selection of model systems in toxicological research and inform the extrapolation of results from those models to humans or wildlife (e.g., Gunnarsson, Jauhiainen, Kristiansson, Nerman, & Larsson, ; Lalone et al., ; Leung et al., ). [...]evolutionary concepts can enrich more than just the applied forms of toxicology; they also provide an important framework that enhances the fundamental understanding of toxicological mechanisms and the basic biology of the genes and proteins that control life's response to toxic chemicals.