Abstract
Morphological disparity, the measure of morphological variation among species and higher taxa, has been at the core of an important research program in paleobiology over the last 25 years. Its quantification is based on the construction and exploration of morphospaces, multidimensional spaces spanned by a set of morphological descriptors, and benefits from a well-established analytical protocol. Two main classes of indices are routinely used to describe the distribution of taxa in morphospace in terms of their spread and spacing. This unique focus on the morphological component of clade dynamics has promoted disparity as a distinct measure of biodiversity complementing traditional taxonomic proxies. Disparity studies have led to improved understanding of the evolutionary history of major clades and fostered new research on adaptive radiations, rates of evolution, and morphological innovation. Currently, active areas of methodological development focus on characterizing the geometric properties of morphospaces, devising indices that describe the structure of disparity, and incorporating phylogenetic information. There have also been increasing efforts to identify the determinants of disparity, from developmental to functional and ecological considerations, leading to conceptual extensions such as allometric disparity. The importance of trends, extinction, and chance as factors in the evolution of disparity remains relatively underexplored and needs more attention.
Melanie J. Hopkins and Sylvain Gerber contributed equally to this work.
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Hopkins, M.J., Gerber, S. (2017). Morphological Disparity. In: Nuno de la Rosa, L., Müller, G. (eds) Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33038-9_132-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33038-9_132-1
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