Journal Article

Morphology predicting ecology: incorporating new methodological and analytical approaches

Franssen, Nathan R, Goodchild, Christopher G, Shepard, Donald B

2015

Overview

Associations between the morphology of animals and their ecology have contributed to our understanding of phenotypic diversity by helping to relate form and function. Most early studies on fishes used traditional measurements of linear distances on the body or fins to quantify morphological variation among taxa. More recently, geometric morphometric analyses have gained popularity for assessing phenotypic shape variation. Along with new methodologies for quantifying morphological variation, researchers have become increasingly aware of the influence of phylogeny on morphological and ecological traits. Our study, which spanned seven cyprinid genera, assessed the abilities of traditional and geometric morphometric approaches to characterize ecologically relevant morphological variation. Furthermore, we compared morphometric approaches employing two analyses (partial Mantel test and Phylogenetic Canonical Correlation Analysis (PCCA)) that test for correlations among data sets while explicitly accounting for phylogenetic relationships. Traditional morphology and body shape showed similar correlations with habitat use in all analyses. In contrast, only traditional morphology was correlated with diet; however, this was only revealed by the PCCA. Our findings indicated the taxonomic span of species under study and the statistical treatment of data are important factors to consider when choosing between traditional or geometric morphometric approaches. In addition, a better understanding of phylogenetic relationships will improve our ability to establish associations between morphology and ecology.

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag,Springer Netherlands,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Animal morphology / Animal Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Correlation analysis / Cyprinidae / data collection / diet / Ecology / Environment / fins / Fish / Freshwater / Freshwater & Marine Ecology / Habitat utilization / habitats / Life Sciences / Morphology / morphometry / Nature Conservation / new methods / phenotypic variation / Phylogeny / prediction / Zoology