Morphometrics for nonmorphometricians

✍ Scribed by Ashraf M.T. Elewa (auth.), Ashraf M.T. Elewa (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 360
• Series: Lecture notes in earth sciences 124
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Morphometrics is concerned with the study of variations and change in the form (size and shape) of organisms or objects adding a quantitative element to descriptions and thereby facilitating the comparison of different objects and organisms. This volume provides an introduction to morphometrics in a clear and simple way without recourse to complex mathematics and statistics. This introduction is followed by a series of case studies describing the variety of applications of morphometrics from paleontology and evolutionary ecology to archaeological artifacts analysis. This is followed by a presentation of future applications of morphometrics and state of the art software for analyzing and comparing shape.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Why Morphometrics?....Pages 3-7
Morphometrics: An Historical Essay....Pages 9-24
Front Matter....Pages 25-25
Controlling for Curvature in the Quantification of Leaf Form....Pages 27-71
Discriminating Groups of Organisms....Pages 73-91
Visual Analysis in Archaeology. An Artificial Intelligence Approach....Pages 93-156
Evolution of the Upper Cretaceous Oysters: Traditional Morphometrics Approach....Pages 157-176
Front Matter....Pages 177-177
Combining Shape Data and Traditional Measurements with the 2B-PLS: Testing the Covariation Between Avian Brain Size and Cranial Shape Variation as an Example....Pages 179-190
Biogeographic Analysis Using Geometric Morphometrics: Clines in Skull Size and Shape in a Widespread African Arboreal Monkey....Pages 191-217
Stock Identification of Marine Populations....Pages 219-232
Correlating Shape Variation with Feeding Performance to Test for Adaptive Divergence in Recently Invading Stickleback Populations from Swiss peri-alpine Environments....Pages 233-257
Macroevolutionary Trends in the Skull of Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs – The Largest Terrestrial Animals to Have Ever Lived....Pages 259-269
The Use of Geometric Morphometrics in Studying Butterfly Wings in an Evolutionary Ecological Context....Pages 271-287
Towards Automating Artifact Analysis: A Study Showing Potential Applications of Computer Vision and Morphometrics to Artifact Typology....Pages 289-305
Morphometric Analysis Applied to the Archaeological Pottery of the Valley of Guadalquivir....Pages 307-323
Some Applications of Geometric Morphometrics to Archaeology....Pages 325-341
Front Matter....Pages 343-343
Prospectus: The Future of Morphometrics....Pages 345-352
Morphometrics and Cosmology: Short Note and Future Hope....Pages 353-355
Morphometrics in Past: Integrating Morphometrics with General Data Analysis Software....Pages 357-362
Back Matter....Pages 363-367

✦ Subjects

Paleontology; Animal Anatomy / Morphology / Histology; Statistics for Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Chemistry and Earth Sciences; Applications of Mathematics; Computer Imaging, Vision, Pattern Recognition and Graphics