Developmental processes transduce diverse influences during phenotype formation, thereby biasing and structuring amount and type of phenotypic variation available for evolutionary processes to act on. The causes, extent, and consequences of this bias are subject to significant debate. Here we explore the role of developmental bias in contributing to organisms’ ability to innovate, to adapt to novel or stressful conditions, and to generate well integrated, resilient phenotypes in the face of perturbations. We focus our inquiry on one taxon, the horned dung beetle genusOnthophagus, and review the role developmental bias might play across several levels of biological organization: (a) gene regulatory networks that pattern specific body regions; (b) plastic developmental mechanisms that coordinate body wide responses to changing environments and; (c) developmental symbioses and niche construction that enable organisms to build teams and to actively modify their own selective environments. We posit that across all these levels developmental bias shapes the way living systems innovate, adapt, and withstand stress, in ways that can alternately limit, bias, or facilitate developmental evolution. We conclude that the structuring contribution of developmental bias in evolution deserves further study to better understand why and how developmental evolution unfolds the way it does.

Microbial symbionts can influence their hosts in stunningly diverse ways. Emerging research suggests that an underappreciated facet of these relationships is the influence microbes can have on their host's responses to novel, or stressful, environmental conditions. We sought to address these and related questions in populations resulting from the recent introduction and subsequent rapid range expansion of Onthophagus taurus dung beetles. Specifically, we manipulated both microbial communities and rearing temperature to detect signatures of developmental and life history differentiation in response to the local thermal conditions in two populations derived from the southern most (Florida) and northern most (Michigan) extremes of the exotic Eastern U.S. range of O. taurus. We then sought to determine the contributions, if any, of host‐associated microbiota to this differentiation. We found that when reared under common garden conditions individuals from Florida and Michigan populations differed significantly in developmental performance measures and life history traits, consistent with population divergence. At the same time, and contrary to our predictions, we failed to find support for the hypothesis that animals perform better if reared at temperatures that match their location of origin and that performance differences may be mediated by host‐associated microbiota. Instead, we found that microbiome swapping across host populations improved developmental performance in both populations, consistent with enemy release dynamics. We discuss the implications of our results for our understanding of the rapid spread of exotic O. taurus through the Eastern United States and the significance of symbiosis in host responses to novel environmental conditions more broadly.