Bioinformatic and biometric methods in plant morphology1

Ap Applicati tions ons in in Pl Plant t Scien Sciences ces Increasingly, quantitative approaches to plant morphology are changing the landscape of research for plant ecology, physiology , and evolution. Advances in microscopy, imaging, and computational analyses potentially allow more detailed investigations than have previously been possible. This has increased the variety and quantity of data available for phenotypic analysis , and is stimulating new directions and applications in the study of plant morphology. The increased speed and detail that can be captured by these new technologies also means that the information represented by shape and form can potentially be as rich a bioinformatic data source as genetic data. As plant scientists, we are only beginning to discover the potential power of these quantitative approaches. On July 29, 2013, we chaired a special session of the annual Botanical Society of America meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. The session sought to bring together plant morphologists, system-atists, and paleobotanists, alongside computer scientists, applied mathematicians, and informaticians, who were united in their interest in developing or applying novel biometric or bio-informatics methods to the form and function of plants. Our aim was to provide a forum for a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and methods, addressing a wide range of applications and research goals, with the shared theme of the quantitative analysis of plant morphology. This special issue is a result of that session. The strong representation of paleoscientists in this issue re-fl ects both our own backgrounds (palynology and paleobotany) and the fi eld's general focus on morphological data. Outside of some exceptional circumstances (e.g., the Miocene Clarkia locality with organelles [ Niklas et al., 1985 ] and DNA [e.g., Kim et al., 2004 ], 250-million-year-old sperm of Glossopteris [ Nishida et al., 2003 ], and chromosomes in 180-million-year-old Osmundaceae [ Bomfl eur et al., 2014 ]), morphology is the key type of data we rely on. However, many other segments of the plant sciences use morphologic data and rely on comparative studies of the plant phenotype, including taxonomy, systematics, evolution, developmental biology, and horticulture. The methods presented in this issue will have relevance to these fi elds as well. several advances in automated plant species identifi cations (reviewed in Cope et al., 2012) inspired this topic. There is a wide application and use of biometric and bioinformatic methods, more than a single issue can address. This collection highlights some recent and …