Quantification of complex modular architecture in plants
- PMID: 29468683
- DOI: 10.1111/nph.15045
Quantification of complex modular architecture in plants
Abstract
Morphometrics, the assignment of quantities to biological shapes, is a powerful tool to address taxonomic, evolutionary, functional and developmental questions. We propose a novel method for shape quantification of complex modular architecture in thalloid plants, whose extremely reduced morphologies, combined with the lack of a formal framework for thallus description, have long rendered taxonomic and evolutionary studies extremely challenging. Using graph theory, thalli are described as hierarchical series of nodes and edges, allowing for accurate, homologous and repeatable measurements of widths, lengths and angles. The computer program MorphoSnake was developed to extract the skeleton and contours of a thallus and automatically acquire, at each level of organization, width, length, angle and sinuosity measurements. Through the quantification of leaf architecture in Hymenophyllum ferns (Polypodiopsida) and a fully worked example of integrative taxonomy in the taxonomically challenging thalloid liverwort genus Riccardia, we show that MorphoSnake is applicable to all ramified plants. This new possibility of acquiring large numbers of quantitative traits in plants with complex modular architectures opens new perspectives of applications, from the development of rapid species identification tools to evolutionary analyses of adaptive plasticity.
Keywords: integrative taxonomy; modular architecture; morphogeometry; software; species delimitation analysis.
© 2018 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2018 New Phytologist Trust.
Similar articles
-
Quantitative morphological analysis of 2D images of complex-shaped branching biological growth forms: the example of branching thalli of liverworts.BMC Res Notes. 2017 Feb 20;10(1):103. doi: 10.1186/s13104-017-2424-0. BMC Res Notes. 2017. PMID: 28219451 Free PMC article.
-
Multiscale quantification of morphodynamics: MorphoLeaf software for 2D shape analysis.Development. 2016 Sep 15;143(18):3417-28. doi: 10.1242/dev.134619. Epub 2016 Jul 7. Development. 2016. PMID: 27387872
-
Evolutionary and Environmental Forces Sculpting Leaf Development.Curr Biol. 2016 Apr 4;26(7):R297-306. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.02.033. Curr Biol. 2016. PMID: 27046820 Review.
-
LeafAnalyser: a computational method for rapid and large-scale analyses of leaf shape variation.Plant J. 2008 Feb;53(3):578-86. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2007.03330.x. Epub 2007 Nov 19. Plant J. 2008. PMID: 18028263
-
Allometric covariation: a hallmark behavior of plants and leaves.New Phytol. 2012 Mar;193(4):882-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.04022.x. New Phytol. 2012. PMID: 22403825 Review.
Cited by
-
AI-based fully automatic analysis of retinal vascular morphology in pediatric high myopia.BMC Ophthalmol. 2024 Sep 27;24(1):415. doi: 10.1186/s12886-024-03682-5. BMC Ophthalmol. 2024. PMID: 39334037 Free PMC article.
-
Integrative approaches to a revision of the liverwort in genus Aneura (Aneuraceae, Marchantiophyta) from Thailand.PeerJ. 2023 Oct 24;11:e16284. doi: 10.7717/peerj.16284. eCollection 2023. PeerJ. 2023. PMID: 37901454 Free PMC article.
-
A Deep Learning System for Fully Automated Retinal Vessel Measurement in High Throughput Image Analysis.Front Cardiovasc Med. 2022 Mar 22;9:823436. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.823436. eCollection 2022. Front Cardiovasc Med. 2022. PMID: 35391847 Free PMC article.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Other Literature Sources
