Introduction to Landmark Methods

Abstract

Most of the work in geometric morphometries has focused on the analysis of landmark data-the two- or three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates of a fixed set of points identified as homologous across specimens (Rohlf and Marcus, 1993 ). The chapters in this section continue to address issues of the analysis of landmark data but differ from similar chapters in the proceedings volumes from earlier workshops (e.g., Rohlf and Bookstein, 1990; Marcus et al., 1993). In earlier workshops the focus was on the basic introduction and exposition of broad areas of landmark analysis (e.g., superimpositions, and spline-based analyses). The current chapters, on the other hand, emphasize the extension and refinement of the basic methods made familiar by those earlier works. This transition is made possible by the rapid maturation of the field in recent years- a maturation further evidenced by the high ratio of application to methodological chapters in the current volume. Although there is still much to be done, there is now a sufficiently rigorous, complete, and accessible foundation for landmark analysis upon which to base new and innovative investigations in evolution, development and numerous other areas. These latest contributions expand and strengthen that foundation.