Bollettino del CILEA (CILEA)· 2013· Review
A field comes of age: geometric morphometrics in the 21 st century
- 744citations
- 2013year
Short summary
Geometric morphometrics, a field that analyzes shape variation using landmark coordinates, has matured significantly over the past two decades, moving beyond simple distance measurements to a cohesive discipline.
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Key points
- Geometric morphometrics uses landmark coordinates to analyze shape variation, supplanting older linear distance methods.
- The Procrustes paradigm is central to current shape analysis in this field.
- The field has seen theoretical advances and expanded applications over the last decade.
- The review covers the methodological toolkit and its use in addressing specific biological questions.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Twenty years ago, Rohlf and Marcus proclaimed that a "revolution in morphometrics" was underway, where classic analyses based on sets of linear distances were being supplanted by geometric approaches making use of the coordinates of anatomical landmarks. Since that time the field of geometric morphometrics has matured into a rich and cohesive discipline for the study of shape variation and covariation. The development of the field is identified with the Procrustes paradigm, a methodological approach to shape analysis arising from the intersection of the statistical shape theory and analytical procedures for obtaining shape variables from landmark data. In this review we describe the Procrustes paradigm and the current methodological toolkit of geometric morphometrics. We highlight some of the theoretical advances that have occurred over the past ten years since our prior review (Adams et al., 2004), what types of anatomical structures are amenable to these approaches, and how they extend the reach of geometric morphometrics to more specialized applications for addressing particular biological hypotheses. We end with a discussion of some possible areas that are fertile ground for future development in the field.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Bollettino del CILEA (CILEA), 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Geometry and Topology
Geometry and TopologyMathematics