Dynamic Morphospaces for Animal Locomotion: A Case Study in Bird Flight

Clicks: 1
ID: 315899
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal

Ranked #82 of 113 articles by views in integrative and comparative biology

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract Morphospaces represent the range of possible biological designs by placing different shapes into a common geometric space. They have revealed that high-dimensional morphological diversity in biological systems tends to concentrate along a reduced set of coordinated axes. Here we argue that extending this framework from static form to dynamic behavior provides a principled way to describe, compare, and translate animal locomotion. Constructing a kinematic morphospace from landmark positions yields a Euclidean space that supports not just dimensionality reduction but reconstruction, projection into shared coordinate systems, and formal comparison of subspaces across individuals and species. Dynamic Mode Decomposition is an additional complementary approach which identifies how shape changes are sequenced in time. Drawing on avian flight as a case study, we review how these tools connect the morphospace tradition in evolutionary biology to emerging questions in locomotor biomechanics, and discuss how the biological morphospace can serve as a common coordinate system for bio-informed engineering design.
Reference Key
openalex_W7163547287 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Lydia A. France, Christina Harvey, Graham K Taylor
Journal integrative and comparative biology
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/icb/icag058
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icag058
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.