Morphological evolution of the vertebrate skull has been explored across a wide range of
tetrapod clades using geometric morphometrics, but the application of these methods to …

With diverse mechanical and sensory functions, the vertebrate cranium is a complex
anatomical structure whose shifts between modularity and integration, especially in …

The hypothesis presented here is that codes as described by Marcello Barbieri are the
fundamental principle behind biological modularity. Modularity has been studied in different …

Understanding general principles about the origin of species remains one of the
foundational challenges in evolutionary biology. The genomic divergence between groups …

Birds are represented by 11,000 species and a great variety of body masses. Modular
organisation of trait evolution across birds has facilitated simultaneous adaptation of …

Simple Summary The diverse components of any morphological structure are integrated
with respect to each other since they have developed, functioned, and evolved together, a …

Unease with the inclusion of “sameness” in Owen's definition of homology characterizes a
substantial part of the literature on this subject, where this term has acquired an increasingly …

Trade-offs are inherent features of many biomechanical systems and are often seen as
evolutionary constraints. Structural decoupling may provide a way to escape those limits in …

Patterns of integration and modularity among organismal traits are prevalent across the tree
of life, and at multiple scales of biological organization. Over the past several decades …

Abstract Analysis of trait covariation plays a pivotal role in the study of phenotypic evolution.
The magnitude of covariation is often quantified with statistics based on dispersion of …