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SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY reaction norms (Amqvist and Johansson, 1998), fluctuating asymmetry (Klingenberg and McIntyre, 1998), and trophic morphology (Caldecutt and Adams, 1998). There has also been recent debate within these pages as to the appropriate place for geometric morphometrics in the context of phylogenetic analysis (Adams and Rosenberg, 1998; Rohlf, 1998a; Swiderski et al., 1998; Zelditch and Fink, 1998; Zeldtich et al., 1998). Much of our theoretical understanding of this powerful and relatively new approach to shape analy-sis is due to work by Kendall on the geomet-ric and statistical properties of shape spaces defined by the Procrustes metric (Kendall, 1984, 1985). It is important that users of these methods appreciate the relationship be-tween the theoretical aspects of geometric morphometrics and their practical application. This report demonstrates that the geometry of sample variation …