The study of function is a neglected area of systematic and historical biology. Over the last
20 years, systematic biology has expanded to include in its purview the study of many …

In the past two decades, molecular investigations of systematic problems have progressed
from uncommon curiosities to a standard means of elucidating phylogenetic history. This …

Morphologists have been slow in realizing that the basic principles of Darwin's theory of
evolution by natural selection meant that understanding the evolution of anatomical features …

The diversity of organismic form has evolved nonuniformly during the history of life.
Quantitative morphological studies reveal profound changes in evolutionary rates …

Systematists and evolutionary geneticists don't often talk to each other, and they routinely
dispaiage each other's work as being of little relevance to evolution. Systematists sometimes …

Understanding the natural world is not possible without an extensive knowledge of
organismal morphology. The encyclopedia of life (Wilson, 2003) would be an empty, sterile …

A search for patterns is a common approach for investigations in several areas of
evolutionary biology. Systematists look for patterns in distributions of derived characters to …

From the perspective of the ecologist, ecomorphological analyses have three distinct
goals:(1) estimation of ecological relationships among species from their positions in …

Ecomorphological analyses generally seek to link the structure and function of organisms
with relevant features of the environment. The scope of ecomorphological studies is far …

As a beginning, I offer a quotation from MacLeod (2002):" The fundamental observation of
biology is morphology. Morphological data form the basis of virtually all systematic …