Controversial morphometrics

Geometric Morphometrics

The field of morphometrics is developing quickly and recent advances allow for geometric techniques to be applied easily to many zoological problems. This article briefly introduces geometric morphometric techniques and then reviews selected areas where those techniques have been applied to questions of general interest. This article is relevant to non-specialists looking for an entry into geom...

Hypaxial muscle: controversial classification and controversial data?

Hypaxial muscle is the anatomical term commonly used when referring to all the ventrally located musculature in the body of vertebrates, including muscles of the body wall and the limbs. Yet these muscles had very humble beginnings when vertebrates evolved from their chordate ancestors, and complex anatomical changes and changes in underlying gene regulatory networks occurred. This review summa...

Towards digital soil morphometrics

Geometric morphometrics and phylogeny

This paper reviews some of the important properties of geometric morphometric shape variables and discusses the advantages and limitations of the use of such data in studies of phylogeny. A method for fitting morphometric data to a phylogeny (i.e., estimating ancestral states of the shape variables) is presented using the squared-change parsimony criterion for estimation. These results are then...

Geometric morphometrics simplified

Although the theory andmethods of the relatively new field of geometric morphometrics are becoming well developed (for an overview, see [1]), it has not yet been applied as widely as it could be, owing to the lack of easily accessible introductory guides. This primer, by Miriam Zelditch and colleagues, should make the field more accessible because the new methods described here are relatively s...