Closely related species may be very difficult to distinguish morphologically, yet sometimes morphology is the only reasonable possibility for taxonomic classification. Here we present learning-vector-quantization artificial neural networks as a powerful tool to classify specimens on the basis of geometric morphometric shape measurements. As an example, we trained a neural network to distinguish...

the house mouse (mus musculus) is a polytypic species, with its geographic distribution largely the result of human migrations during the late glacial and holocene. this study used geometric morphometry (gm) on upper and lower molars to discriminate among the three subspecies of the house mouse present in iran. moreover cranial remains of this species were uncovered on several archaeological si...

The recently developed geometric morphometrics methods represent an important contribution of statistics and geometry to the study of biological shapes. We propose simple protocols using shape distances that incorporate geometric techniques into linear quantitative genetic models that should provide insights into the contribution of genetics to shape variation in organisms. The geometric approa...

Based on their morphological and genetic similarity, several studies have proposed that Lutjanus campechanus purpureus are the same species, but there is no confirmed consensus yet. A population-based study concerning otolith shape analyses was used to evaluate if L. species. Samples were collected from populations in southwestern Gulf of Mexico Venezuelan Caribbean. Otolith evaluated by tradit...

The Anderson's crocodile newt, Echinotriton andersoni, is an endangered species distributed in the islands of Central Ryukyus, Japan. This well known to show high intraspecific genetic variation among islands, but its morphological has not been explored. We examined skull this including enigmatic specimens collected from Taiwan by using geometric morphometrics, and found sexual differences geog...

A new species of Funastrum is described from Veracruz, Mexico. Although saganii sp. nov. morphologically similar to F. elegans and lindenianum, there are differences in leaf flower morphology geographic distribution. Descriptions, illustrations the distribution this provided, its conservation status discussed. Morphological analysis was performed using geometric morphometrics. This discovery hi...

A selection of papers presented at the Special Session 8 ‘Using multivariate analyses to interpret lithic variability: Contributions and limitations’ held during 2018 MetroArchaeo conference (22-24 October 2018, Cassino, Italy) is published in Journal Lithic Studies. Multivariate statistical are increasingly used discern patterns variability archaeological materials help with their interpretati...