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Symmetry
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Biometric and Symmetry Issues in Animal and Human Morphology
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Biometric and Symmetry Issues in Animal and Human Morphology

A special issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994). This special issue belongs to the section "Life Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2021) | Viewed by 6704

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Karel Kleisner

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Science, Charles University, 116 36 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Dr. Alex Jones

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, UK
Interests: evolutionary psychology; facial attractiveness; social judgments; personality; health perception; face perception

Special Issue Information

Morphology—the science of organismal form—is amongst the oldest scientific branches that laid the theoretical foundations to all of comparative biology. However, the rapid development of molecular genetic methodologies in the last century shifted the focus of the scientific community predominantly toward molecular studies and away from living forms. We believe that balanced evolutionary explanations should integrate at all levels of biological organization, including considering morphology as a causal factor in its own right, and not just the result of other systems. Organismal form is a significant factor that interacts with the environment, and other organisms within it, which bestows adaptive roles and survival values. Recently, the role of symmetry as a fitness indicator has received a great deal of attention, and the growing development of multivariate statistics and computational and visualization techniques offer new avenues into the study of human and nonhuman animal forms. Such shifts bring about opportunities in technical and metholodogical innovations, and important theoretical and conceptual reflections. Therefore, this Special Issue aims to promote methodological approaches and theoretical accounts focusing on symmetry and biometric issues in animal and human morphology. The Special Issue welcomes original research papers, reviews, and conceptual and theoretical essays. Technical notes, short communications, and comments will also be given attention.

Dr. Karel Kleisner
Dr. Alex Jones
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Symmetry is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • shape variation
  • laterality
  • asymmetry
  • allometry
  • homology
  • morphospaces
  • organism
  • living form
  • morphological disparity

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 1906 KiB  
Article
Morphological Uniqueness: The Concept and Its Relationship to Indicators of Biological Quality of Human Faces from Equatorial Africa
by Karel Kleisner
Symmetry 2021, 13(12), 2408; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13122408 - 13 Dec 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2073
Abstract
Facial symmetry, averageness, and the level of sex-typical development of dimorphic traits are traditionally associated with various biological quality indicators and should be, therefore, preferred in mate choice. The aim of this study is to propose a concept of morphological uniqueness and uncover [...] Read more.
Facial symmetry, averageness, and the level of sex-typical development of dimorphic traits are traditionally associated with various biological quality indicators and should be, therefore, preferred in mate choice. The aim of this study is to propose a concept of morphological uniqueness and uncover its possible associations to putative phenotypic cues of biological quality. In contrast to typicality expressed by averageness, morphological uniqueness quantifies the degree of possessing characteristics unique to particular groups. I employed a combination of geometric morphometric and Bayesian multiple regression to analyze 300 Cameroonian faces, while an additional 1153 faces from eight distinct populations from across four continents were used as a reference sample of the global population to calculate the morphological uniqueness of Cameroonians. I found that morphological uniqueness is positively associated with a feminine facial shape in women and negatively with morphological masculinity in men. Facial symmetry was positively associated with female faces with greater levels of uniqueness; the result for male faces was inconclusive. The faces of both sexes perceived as more attractive had lower levels of morphological uniqueness. Facial distinctiveness showed no relationship to morphological uniqueness in either sex, which indicates that morphological uniqueness and distinctiveness are two complementary approaches to studying facial typicality. In the conclusion, the evolutionary significance of the proposed concept and its potential applicability is discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biometric and Symmetry Issues in Animal and Human Morphology)
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13 pages, 29224 KiB  
Article
Diversity in Primate External Eye Morphology: Previously Undescribed Traits and Their Potential Adaptive Value
by Juan Olvido Perea-García, Dariusz P. Danel and Antónia Monteiro
Symmetry 2021, 13(7), 1270; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13071270 - 15 Jul 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3711
Abstract
Comparative examinations of external eye morphology in primates initially focused on communicative functions of the eye. Subsequent work has failed to find consistent associations between specific eye morphologies and communicative functions. In this article, we review the field of primate external eye morphology [...] Read more.
Comparative examinations of external eye morphology in primates initially focused on communicative functions of the eye. Subsequent work has failed to find consistent associations between specific eye morphologies and communicative functions. In this article, we review the field of primate external eye morphology and inspect publicly available and unpublished photographs. We identify and describe five commonly occurring traits that have not received attention so far. We cross-examined the clinical and psychological literature to propose potential adaptive functions. These potential adaptive functions include communicative functions, but also photoregulatory functions and photoprotective functions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biometric and Symmetry Issues in Animal and Human Morphology)
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