A Course in Morphometrics for Biologists
Geometry and Statistics for Studies of Organismal Form

This book frames and demonstrates the best of modern morphometric methods, bridging the gap between biostatistics and organismal biology.

Fred L. Bookstein (Author)

9781107190948, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 October 2018

544 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.7 cm, 1 kg

'Statistics is the common language of the sciences, but few scientists speak it as fluently as Fred L. Bookstein. His new book starts by introducing the basic vocabulary of statistics - averages, correlation, regression - and continues to explain the foundations of multivariate statistics and geometric morphometrics. Even though written for advanced students, the historical, conceptual, and geometrical insights in this book will surprise even experienced scientists and statisticians.' Philipp Mitteröcker, University of Vienna

This book builds a much-needed bridge between biostatistics and organismal biology by linking the arithmetic of statistical studies of organismal form to the biological inferences that may follow from it. It incorporates a cascade of new explanations of regression, correlation, covariance analysis, and principal components analysis, before applying these techniques to an increasingly common data resource: the description of organismal forms by sets of landmark point configurations. For each data set, multiple analyses are interpreted and compared for insight into the relation between the arithmetic of the measurements and the rhetoric of the subsequent biological explanations. The text includes examples that range broadly over growth, evolution, and disease. For graduate students and researchers alike, this book offers a unique consideration of the scientific context surrounding the analysis of form in today's biosciences.

1. What this book is about
2. Getting started
3. Multiple regression in general and in special settings
4. Transition to multivariate analysis
5. Geometric morphometrics.

Subject Areas: Biology, life sciences [PS], Probability & statistics [PBT], Anatomy [MFC], Anthropology [JHM]