Echeverry Ana María, Londoño-Cruz Edgardo, Benítez Hugo A
Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Palmira 763531, Colombia.
Departamento de Biología, Universidad del Valle, Cali 760032, Colombia.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Apr 13;10(4):675. doi: 10.3390/ani10040675.
The increasing activity in morphological studies has provided new tools to analyses the shape quantitatively, these quantitative measurements allow the researcher to examine the variation in shape and perform analysis to examine the quantitative differences among the species shapes, where geometric morphometrics has rendered great results in the last years. This study was focused on assessing the morphometric variation between populations of of the family Lottidae, an abundant group of gastropods in the rocky ecosystems of Bahía Málaga and Isla Gorgona (Colombian Pacific). This family has a high morphological diversity, making the identification of some morphotypes problematic work. Geometric morphometrics methods were applied on the shell using dorsal, lateral and ventral views. Different multivariate analyses were performed to differentiate the groups of species and populations (principal component analysis, morphological distances comparisons and grouping analysis by means of the Ward method). The results indicate that individuals of the species have key geometric characteristics associated to the different populations (depth intertidal zones) for classification, being the geometric shape of the shell enough to determine morphotypes between the different populations studied. Aspects associated with the combination of ecological variables with morphometric ones are necessary to be able to visualize with a higher resolution the structural complexity of populations and their adaptation processes. Furthermore, it is obvious that there is a strong need to conduct more explorations of environmental and ecological processes that provide some insight on why the morphological characteristics are so variable in the same species.
形态学研究活动的日益增加为定量分析形状提供了新工具，这些定量测量使研究人员能够检查形状的变化，并进行分析以检验不同物种形状之间的定量差异，在过去几年中，几何形态计量学取得了显著成果。本研究的重点是评估笠贝科种群之间的形态测量变异，笠贝科是巴伊亚马拉加和戈尔戈纳岛（哥伦比亚太平洋地区）岩石生态系统中丰富的腹足类动物群体。该科具有高度的形态多样性，使得一些形态型的识别成为一项有问题的工作。对贝壳的背视图、侧视图和腹视图应用了几何形态计量学方法。进行了不同的多变量分析以区分物种和种群组（主成分分析、形态距离比较以及通过沃德方法进行分组分析）。结果表明，该物种的个体具有与不同种群（潮间带深度）相关的关键几何特征用于分类，贝壳的几何形状足以确定所研究的不同种群之间的形态型。将生态变量与形态测量变量相结合的相关方面对于能够以更高分辨率可视化种群的结构复杂性及其适应过程是必要的。此外，显然非常需要对环境和生态过程进行更多探索，以深入了解为什么同一物种的形态特征如此多变。
