Overview

This book aims to explain how to use R to perform morphometrics. Morpho- tric analysis is the study of shape and size variations and covariations and their covariations with other variables. Morphometrics is thus deeply rooted within stat- tical sciences. While most applications concern biology, morphometrics is becoming common tools used in archeological, palaeontological, geographical, or medicine disciplines. Since the recent formalizations of some of the ideas of predecessors, such as D’arcy Thompson, and thanks to the development of computer techno- gies and new ways for appraising shape changes and variation, morphometrics have undergone, and are still undergoing, a revolution. Most techniques dealing with s- tistical shape analysis have been developed in the last three decades, and the number of publications using morphometrics is increasing rapidly. However, the majority of these methods cannot be implemented in available software and therefore prosp- tive students often need to acquire detailed knowledge in informatics and statistics before applying them to their data. With acceleration in the accumulation of me- ods accompanying the emerging science of statistical shape analysis, it is becoming important to use tools that allow some autonomy. R easily helps ful?ll this need. Risalanguage andenvironment forstatisticalcomputingandgraphics. Although there is an increasing number of computer applications that perform morphometrics, using R has several advantages that confer to users considerable power and possible new horizons in a world that requires rapid adaptability.

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From the reviews: A key feature of this book is the extensive use of R, both through the direct use of code and through references to a large number of packages relevant to the morphometrics area... This is an interesting book and I certainly learned new things by reading it. Its particular contribution is to bring together a wide variety of tools, both statistical and computational, which are relevant to morphometrics and to present these in a very practical manner through R. Those who are new to the topic are likely to gain most value from the book once they have gained some familiarity with at least some of the tools involved. However, the synthesis of tools presented here will undoubtedly lead readers into contact with, and subsequent understanding of. a wider array of methods at a very practical level. (Adrian Bowman, The American Statistical Association, Volume 31, September 2009)

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