Seeing the wood through the trees. Combining shape information from different landmark configurations

Hystrix, the Italian Journal of Mammalogy

article

Antonio Profico¹  Paolo Piras¹  Costantino Buzi¹  Antonietta Del Bove³  Marina Melchionna⁵  Gabriele Senczuk⁶  Valerio Varano⁷  Alessio Veneziano⁸  Pasquale Raia⁵  Giorgio Manzi⁶ 

[1] Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Sapienza Università di Roma;PalaeoHub, Department of Archaeology, University of York;Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution;Àrea de Prehistòria, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat Rovira i Virgili;Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, dell’Ambiente e delle Risorse, Università di Napoli;Dipartimento di Biologia e di Biotecnologia, Sapienza Università di Roma;Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Roma Tre;Sincrotrone Trieste

关键词: geometric morphometrics;    morphology;    skull;    primates;    2D images;    combinland;   

DOI  :  10.4404/hystrix-00206-2019

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Associazione Teriologica Italiana

【 摘 要 】

The geometric morphometric (GM) analysis of complex anatomical structures is an ever morepowerful tool to study biological variability, adaptation and evolution. Here, we propose a newmethod (combinland), developed in R, meant to combine the morphological information containedin different landmark coordinate sets into a single dataset, under a GM context. combinland buildsa common ordination space taking into account the entire shape information encoded in the starting configurations. We applied combinland to a Primate case study including 133 skulls belongingto 14 species. On each specimen, we simulated photo acquisitions converting the 3D landmarksets into six 2D configurations along standard anatomical views. The application of combinlandshows statistically negligible differences in the ordination space compared to that of the original3D objects, in contrast to a previous method meant to address the same issue. Hence, we arguecombinland allows to correctly retrieve 3D-quality statistical information from 2D landmark configurations. This makes combinland a viable alternative when the extraction of 3D models is notpossible, recommended, or too expensive, and to make full use of disparate sources (and views) ofmorphological information regarding the same specimens. The code and examples for the application of combinland are available in the Arothron R package.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC