Geometric Morphometrics and Phylogeny

Instructor: Dr. Chris Klingenberg (Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester)

Course requirements: Graduate or Postgraduate in Biological Sciences, basic knowledge in statistics and in the use of personal computers. Basic knowledge of geometric morphometrics.

Recomendations: Personal laptop is recommended. We would like to encourage participants to bring along their own morphometrics data and phylogeny information.

Language: English

Date: April 7-9 th 2010

Site: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona.

Program Topics

1.     Phylogeny, trees and phylogenetic reasoning.

2.     Brief review of geometric morphometrics (Procrustes fit, PCA, etc.).

3.     Mapping traits onto phylogenies: squared-change parsimony.

4.     Phylogenetic signal, morphometric traits and estimating phylogeny.

5.     Practice: making/editing Nexus files, mapping morphometric data onto the tree (Mesquite, MorphoJ).

6.     Comparative methods: independent contrasts.

7.     Application in morphometrics: evolutionary allometry, integration, ecomorphology.

8.     Additional topics: alternative methods, disparity and diversification.

9.     Practice: comparative methods (MorphoJ).