LANDMARK-BASED THIN-PLATE SPLINE RELATIVE WARP ANALYSIS OF GASTROPOD SHELLS

In the analysis of organismal form, landmark-based geometrical morphom etrics no iu are preferred to traditional morphometrics by many system atists. However, certain forms have eluded geometrical morphometric an alysis because landmarks on them are difficult to define; this situati on is a problem of logistics rather than an inadequacy of the landmark -based approach. In this article, a landmark-based geometrical morphom etric analysis is performed on one such form (the gastropod shell), an d the results obtained are compared to those obtained using more tradi tional methods of morphometric analysis.