Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2019 Sep 1;59(3):599-603. doi: 10.1093/icb/icz121.
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.
近年来，进化生物力学和形态学领域已经发展成为一门深度定量和综合的科学，使我们对结构关系如何塑造宏观进化模式有了更丰富的理解。本期特刊突出了概念和实验前沿的新研究，特别关注将大数据方法应用于形态-功能进化的经典问题。正如本特刊所说明的，新技术和分析工具正在促进生物力学、功能形态学和系统发育比较方法的整合，以催化一个新的、更具综合性的学科。尽管我们正处于生物机体大数据产生的边缘，但该领域的数据仍然有限。这种数据瓶颈主要是由于数字化标本、记录和跟踪生物运动以及从大量数据集中提取模式的速度限制步骤。自动化和机器学习方法有很大的潜力来帮助数据生成跟上研究思路的步伐。最后一个重要的注意事项是，本期特刊中呈现的几乎所有研究都依赖于博物馆收藏的数以万计的标本。如果没有博物馆标本的收集、管理和保护，该领域的未来将黯淡得多。
