METHODS IN GEOMETRIC MORPHOMETRICS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS IN ONTOGENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY OF ANIMALS
Geometric morphometrics has beenrecognized as one of the most important tools in Biology. Investigations referring to the ontogeny and evolution of several animal groups have been fascinated by development of new theories and methods in ths field, while those theories and methods are poorly known to China so far. Here, we give a brief introduction on the methodologies proposed in the last thirty years, and the application of geometric morphometrics in studying on the development and evolution of animals. The most frequendy used methods are landmarks, outlines, while surface analysis and finite element analysis have been proposed based on 3-dimentional data in the last decade. The ontogenetic, intraspecific, interspecific shape variation and the morphological integration of complex structure could be investigated by geometric morphometrics. Combining geometric morphometrics with bioinformatics probably will promote a better understanding on the ontogeny and evolution of different animals. With the development of technologies in biological imaging and mass data processing, the 3-D geometric analysis probably will replace the 2 D dominated methods.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
