Morphology (biology) - definition classification and history


Morphology - definition




Morphology is a branch of biology dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features. It is the study of the size, shape, and structure of animals, plants, and microorganisms and of the relationships of their constituent parts.

The term refers to the general aspects of biological form and arrangement of the parts of a plant or an animal.The etymology of the word "morphology" is from the Ancient Greek μορφή, meaning "form", and λόγος meaning "word, study, the concept of form in biology dates back to Aristotlethe field of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and independently by the German anatomist Karl Friedrich Burdach who was a physiologist. Among other important theorists of morphology are Lorenz Oken, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Richard Owen, Karl Gegenbaur, and Ernst Haeckel.

Divisions of morphology

  • Comparative morphology is the analysis of the patterns of the locus of structures within the body plan of an organism and forms the basis of taxonomical categorization.
  • Functional morphology is the study of the relationship between the structure and function of morphological features.
  • Experimental morphology is the study of the effects of external factors on the morphology of organisms under experimental conditions, such as the effect of genetic mutation.
  • Anatomy is a "branch of morphology that deals with the structure of organisms.
  • Molecular morphology is a rarely used term, usually referring to the superstructure of polymers such as fiber formation or to larger composite assemblies. The term is commonly not applied to the spatial structure of individual molecules.
  • Gross morphology refers to the collective structures of an organism as a whole as a general description of the form and structure of an organism, taking into account all of its structures without specifying an individual structure.

Morphology and classification

Most taxa differ morphologically from other taxa. Typically, closely related taxa differ much less than more distantly related ones, but there are exceptions to this. Cryptic species are species that look very similar, or perhaps even outwardly identical, but are reproductively isolated.  

In addition, there can be morphological differences within a species, such as in Apoica flavissima where queens are significantly smaller than workers. A further problem with relying on morphological data is that what may appear, morphologically speaking, to be two distinct species, may in fact be shown by DNA analysis to be a single species.

The significance of these differences can be examined through the use of allometric engineering in which one or both species are manipulated to phenocopy the other species.A step relevant to the evaluation of morphology between features within species includes an assessment of the terms: homology and homoplasy

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