The Future is Bright for Evolutionary Morphology and Biomechanics in the Era of Big Data
Abstract
In recent years, the fields of evolutionary biomechanics and morphology have developed into a deeply quantitative and integrative science, resulting in a much richer understanding of how structural relationships shape macroevolutionary patterns. This issue highlights new research at the conceptual and experimental cutting edge, with a special focus on applying big data approaches to classic questions in form–function evolution. As this issue illustrates, new technologies and analytical tools are facilitating the integration of biomechanics, functional morphology, and phylogenetic comparative methods to catalyze a new, more integrative discipline. Although we are at the cusp of the big data generation of organismal biology, the field is nonetheless still data-limited. This data bottleneck is primarily due to the rate-limiting steps of digitizing specimens, recording and tracking organismal movements, and extracting patterns from massive datasets. Automation and machine-learning approaches hold great promise to help data generation keep pace with ideas. As a final and important note, almost all the research presented in this issue relied on specimens—totaling the tens of thousands—provided by museum collections. Without collection, curation, and conservation of museum specimens, the future of the field is much less bright.
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- Authors
- Muñoz, M. M., & Price, S. A.
- Affiliations
- Virginia Tech (US)
- Clemson University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Muñoz, Martha M
- Venue
- Integrative and Comparative Biology
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2019-06-28
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 599-603
- ISSN
- 1540-7063 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-7023
- OpenAlex
- W2955592992
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 6.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
- Locations
- Integrative and Comparative Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- NSF (FELS ID1839250, DEB-1556953)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Geometry and Topology › Morphological variations and asymmetry
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Evolution and Paleontology Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Urology › Comparative Animal Anatomy Studies
- Keywords
- evolutionary morphology, evolutionary biomechanics, macroevolution, phylogenetic comparative analysis, big data, museum specimens, digitization, machine learning, automation, data bottleneck, motion tracking
- MeSH terms
- Big Data, Animals, Biomechanical Phenomena, Biological Evolution, Invertebrates, Phylogeny, Vertebrates, Computational Biology
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