Molecules and morphology

From Molecules to Morphology

Drosophila reproduction: Molecules meet morphology.

Our understanding of how male seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) influence the outcome of copulation in a wide range of insect taxa has been fueled primarily by studies of Drosophila (1). SFPs are known to localize, after copulation, to specific regions of the female reproductive tract and nervous system. Manipulative studies revealed that these proteins control a number of postcopulatory processes,...

Morphology, molecules, and the phylogenetics of cetaceans.

Recent phylogenetic analyses of cetacean relationships based on DNA sequence data have challenged the traditional view that baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti) are each monophyletic, arguing instead that baleen whales are the sister group of the odontocete family Physeteridae (sperm whales). We reexamined this issue in light of a morphological data set composed of 207 char...

Grass Phylogeny and Classification: Conflict of Morphology and Molecules

The grass family (Poaceae) has been recognized as a unique lineage for more than 200 years, based initially on characters of inflorescence and spikelet morphology and corroborated by anatomical and other features in the latter half of the twentieth century. There have been a number of attempts to derive a phylogeny of sections of the family from structural (morphological and anatomical) charact...

Trees within trees: genes and species, molecules and morphology.

The construction and interpretation of gene trees is fundamental in molecular systematics. If the gene is defined in a historical (coalescent) sense, there can be multiple gene trees within the single contiguous set of nucleotides, and attempts to construct a single tree for such a sequence must deal with homoplasy created by conflict among divergent histories. On a larger scale, incongruence i...