CERoPath

"Introduction to morphometrics: from measurements to biological shape analyses "

Mahasarakham University, Thailand, July 20th-22nd 2011
 

Rationale:
Morphometrics is the analysis of shape and size variation. In biology, ecology, or in paleontology, it is often necessary to understand phenotypic variation in a quantitative way for relating phenotypes to evolutionary forces or to ecological factors. Analysing variation of biological objects is often necessary for a wide array of studies concerning taxonomy, evolutionary systematics, eco-physiology, developmental biology, ecology,..., etc. Since the beginning of quantitative biology, an array of statistical methods dedicated to the study of shape variation have been developped by statisticians and biologists leading to the new discipline of quantitative shape analysis.

This workshop is therefore intended for scientists, graduate and phD students who are in needs to analyse shape variation among biological objects. During that workshop, scientists and students will directly practice morphometric analyses and work on original data in the R software and environment. The program start with an introduction to traditional analyses with simple concepts (e.g. size, and shape, allometries) and simple techniques (analysis of shape ratios)  and ends with the most up to date techniques such as Procrustes analyses and elliptic fourier analysies. Associated methods will cover explorative and descriptive statistics (bivariate plots, box plot, PCA)  to exploratory methods (linear models, linear discriminant analysis, MANOVA), but also specific methods of geometric morphometrics (e.g., TPS).

 
Proposed schedule:
 
July 20th:

9h-12h: introduction:
- why measuring morphology of living things ?
- How getting morphometric measurements ?
- Which software to use: introduction to the R environment
 
14h-17h.
- analysis of traditionnal data sets
* sex and shape size dimorphism in crabs
* the notion of allometry
* introduction to log-shape ratio
* analysis of measurement for systematics: the Iris case and multivariate analyses: principal component analysis, manova, linear discriminant analysis.
 

July 21st

9 h -12h
Introduction to geometric morphometrics
* advantage of geometric morphometrics on traditionnal morphometrics
* the procrustes method
* analysis of primate data sets
 
14h-17h
* analysis of outlines and introduction to elliptic fourier analysis
* analysis of rodent data sets
 
July 22nd

9h-12h
* interpolating shape variation using transformation grids
* developmental data and geometric morphometrics
* multivariate allometry
 
14h-17h.
* fluctuating asymmetry and related topics
* Analysis of biological data in a phylogenetic context

 
Prerequisites:
- knowledge of basic statistics (descriptive and inductive)
- suggested readings "R for beginners" from E. Paradis (cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Paradis-rdebuts_en.pdf)
 
I suggest that participants bring their laptop for being able to follow the workshop. The workshop being not an "elective" class, people will practice on real data sets in the R software environment. R should be installed on the computer of participants. More information can be found in R for beginners from Paradis, but also at the url:
http://www.r-project.org/ 
http://www.stat.umn.edu/HELP/r.html 
 

The workshop is limited to 30-35 attendants, please contact organizers before coming.
 

Contacts and local information:

Who to contact for registering and attending the workshop: Julien Claude, Chantima Piyapong.
 
There are several hotels downtown in Mahasarakham, contact Chantima Piyapong for eventual booking.