Stomach-Churning Rating: 8/10 don’t look at the gooooaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!! Too late.
Goat morphology is cool! (from work with local artist)
Morphology in biology, to me, is about the science of the relationship of anatomical form to function (including biomechanics), evolution, development and other areas of organismal biology. It thus encompasses the more descriptive, form-focused area of anatomy. But in common parlance I use the two terms interchangeably, because many scientists and the general public do know what anatomy is but get confused by the word “morphology”. Not wishing to wage a semantic skirmish or get into what linguistic or other morphology is, I shall move on. But as the title betrays, this post is about morphology and how we should be proud of it as scientists who study it. This is a companion post to my earlier post on Anatomy, which was aimed at a more general audience than at my colleagues. Yet general audience, stick around. You might find this interesting.
I’m a morphologist at heart. What interests me most about organisms is how their form is not only beautiful and amazing itself but tells us profound things about other aspects of biology, as I stated in the first sentence above. I tend to call myself an evolutionary biomechanist, but morphology is in there too, at the heart of what I do, and biomechanical evolutionary morphologist — while more accurate — just does not roll off the lingual apparatus. I’ll dodge that semantic minefield of branding issues now. I’ll instead move on to my more important point that many (but not all) morphologists go through a phase in their career in which they have some strong feelings of being looked down on by other biologists/scientists as doing outmoded or inferior science. I explained in my Anatomy post that this “inferiority” is not the case today, moreso than ever; that the field is in a dynamic renaissance; so if you want some talking points go there. Regardless, these feelings of being almost stigmatized can exacerbate Imposter Syndrome, especially early in a scientific career.
Lizard morphology is cool! And museums exist to house morphological specimens like these.
I can think of one such case of bad feelings in my not-too-distant memory: at a conference dinner, one colleague sitting to my right said to my colleague to my left “What do you think about anatomy? Should students even do any research on it?” and went on with a bit of diatribe about the why-bother-ness of anatomy relative to other areas such as biomechanics. They both knew of my interests in this area, I’m quite sure, so it was as if I was not there sitting in between them. I was so appalled I was stunned into silence, but seething, and the colleague to my left didn’t defend the field either, even though they did a fair amount of research in it. It took a long time for me to cool down, and I still feel a bit offended and shocked that my colleague would say something so awkward and obliquely confrontational. Similar situations occurred during my PhD work at Berkeley, where biomechanics was having a heyday and anatomy was just beginning to rise from the ashes. It’s odd to me when biomechanists devalue morphology, because so much of mechanics depends on and relates to it, but to each their own. In many biological fields there are reductionist schisms that think they can divorce organisms from other aspects of their biology without losing something, so I’m not surprised, but maybe I am falling into my own trap of condescension here…
Anyway, I had those feelings of being on the receiving end of collegial condescension for a long time myself, and maybe that’s part of why I settled on calling my speciality something other than morphology. Shame on me, and double shame for getting back to that branding issue. But maybe not– maybe it IS important to talk about branding. I’ve been thinking a lot about my career and morphology in recent years, and keep returning to the thought that I need to embrace morphology in an even tighter love-hug. This blog has long been intended as a step in that direction (my Pinterest “Mucho Morphology” page is another step), but I could do more. Speaking of morphologists generally, perhaps we all could. Morphology still has some PR issues, most of us would probably agree, despite its arguable renaissance.
Fetal whale morphology is cool! (at Queen Mary UofL)
Thus my point of this post is simple: let’s try using the words morphology or anatomy more often in our scientific communications. Put those words out there and say them with pride. Let’s keep name-dropping morphology everywhere we can, within reason, and defending its value if challenged. To do this, we’ll need to know how we individually feel about morphology, and ensure we’re well informed to defend it. So think about those things, too, if you join this cause. By waging a PR battle against the forces of anti-morphology condescension, be they waxing or waning, we can get others to give our field its due credit. Fly that flayed banner of morphology high.
See a cool picture of an animal and want to post it on social media? Emphasize that it doesn’t just look cool but has amazing anatomy. Publish a cool new paper showing how a novel adaptation evolved? Remind readers of the morphological (or at least phenotypic) basis of that adaptation and how it interacts with the environment. Summarizing your research interests and discipline to a colleague or on a website/CV? Put morphology in there. Stand up straight when you do, too. Morphology, morphology, morphology. Learn to love that word and it will serve us all well. Branding and PR are only part of the struggle that needs to happen, but much as they may be to our distaste they can help. Doing great morphology-based science is the most important thing, but as social human beings the PR issue cannot be ignored.
Cat shoulder morphology is cool! (RVC teaching collection)
This was a shortish post for me but it’s something I feel strongly about. My feelings have been magnified by taking on the role of Chair-Elect of the Division of Vertebrate Morphology at SICB, assisting the awesome current Chair Dr. Callum Ross and wise past-Chair Alice Gibb in addition the the rest of the committee and division, and as an Executive Committee member in the International Society of Vertebrate Morphology. I now have some extra responsibility to do something. Complaining about the state of affairs doesn’t help much– doing something can. If you’re a vertebrate morphologist, you should join these professional societies/divisions, attend their superb meetings and join their increasing presence on social media like Facebook (and soon Twitter?). Speak up and join in, please, these societies exist to help you and morphology!
Did you notice I didn’t use the title of the post as a lead-in to altered lyrics from a certain hit U2 song? Well I did. Maybe you’ll appreciate me resisting the temptation here. My Xmas song about our three new morphology papers didn’t exactly evoke angelic choruses.
What do you think, morphologists and non-morphologists? I am sure there are analogous situations in other fields. I’m curious how other morphologists or fields deal with or have struggled with this kind of image problem before. Especially under situations where the science itself is vigorous and rigorous, but the perception may be otherwise.
What's In John's Freezer? 
To what extent does the shame result from a perception that anatomy and morphology are too “small picture”? We have it beat into our heads from Day 1 that “big picture science” (whatever that is) is most important. I think there is a very parallel (and oft-discussed) situation in basic taxonomy and systematics (and indeed, these topics directly use anatomy!). This attitude comes across in many ways subtle and non-subtle; for instance, specialist journals that consider straight-up anatomical description or alpha taxonomy insufficiently interesting for publication(!), or funding agencies that balk at funding such work unless sugar-coated with vague references to global change and mass extinctions.
I think that is a perception that is out there. In palaeo, I see these kinds of opinions being voiced loudly sometimes from people who favour macroevolution studies (e.g. diversity vs. time) as if that is the most important kind of science. Takes all kinds to move science forward, I’d say.
Many times like this, it is people defending their disciplinary “turf”, e.g. look at the history of how comparative anatomy was eclipsed by genetics during the advent of the Modern Synthesis- a huge turf war that is still winding down.
I agree. What’s interesting (to me) about paleontology is how diverse life can become. Look at Antopodentus unicus for example; A wierd alienesque type mouth stuck on the body of a nothosaur, and it existed! I just find that crazy!
“To what extent does the shame result from a perception that anatomy and morphology are too “small picture”? We have it beat into our heads from Day 1 that “big picture science” (whatever that is) is most important.”
Matt Wedel likes to point out that, while “big picture” papers are very sexy in the right-here-right-now, they tend to be forgotten (or worse, mocked) within a decade or two. Whereas the solid anatomical descriptive work of the likes of Hatcher (1901), Riggd (1904), Gilmore (1936) and Janensch (many years!) still keeps being useful all the while in our present work. If you want your work to still be cited in a hundred years, better work on anatomy!
Sadly, I don’t have the text with me at the moment, but I recall that in On Growth & Form, Thompson said something to the effect of how an organism’s morphology is a record of the sum total of forces that have acted upon it, including physical, developmental, and evolutionary. That sentiment has always stuck with me (even though the exact phrasing clearly didn’t), as it highlighted how supremely integrative morphology is. Every lizard in a jar or mammal skeleton *is* “the Big Picture” in and of itself.
I remember that (paraphrased) quote now, thanks! It’s indeed a good one.
I think too few students on the K-12 and early college level don’t quite realize that there are ways to study anatomy and conduct morphological research without entering the medical professions. So many of my high school students think functional morphology and animal anatomy in general is really cool, but either don’t know how to articulate (ha, anatomy joke) their feelings beyond sharing on social media, or even worse, they don’t have access to resources and proper guidance to conduct rudimentary research on that kind of topic. The more students are exposed to the awesomeness of anatomy and morphology, and the earlier they do so, the more students will hopefully become jazzed about the topics–and then defend them vigorously as academics, professionals, or wherever their careers take them.
Absolutely! I didn’t get into teaching issues in my post but it’s one clear area of strong synergy between morphological research and teaching– and teaching morphology [other than med school anatomy] is in crisis. We need more courses in morphology but to do that like you say we need to get kids excited in it before undergrad, and realizing what it is (not just “biology” but morphology/anatomy).
Interesting post and although we’re in the same fields as a museum curator we often find the whole of natural history suffering from ‘kid’s table syndrome’ when compared to other kinds of museums (part PR issues, part biases in valuing explicitly human made objects) and then within ‘biology departments’ there’s seems to be a pecking order that I think is all tied up with prestige and PR as well as the drive to be novel and innovative.
That’s not to say there aren’t cutting edge improvements in anatomy and morphology but there seems to be a stigma around the longest lived biological disciplines resulting in the worrying scenarios where different disciplines within biology speak a different language, publish in different journals, go to different conferences.
So I’m with you I think we just need to shout (even) more about what we’re doing because there are CLICHE INCOMING still so many unknowns when it comes to the basic morphology and anatomy of most things.
As someone who works on molecules (and a paleontologist), I always find it strange when many molecular people try to do everything in a vacuum without morphology at all. I think it is critical to understand where and what you are sampling but without morphological knowledge people tend to just do sampling wherever. This arbitrary sampling can really change the outcome of molecular studies because of expression differences between different areas of individual tissues or throughout the body.
I think a lot of information is lost when you work only on molecules without thinking about how the whole morphology affects what is observed. I think morphology and molecules complement one another in many ways (one of the big reasons I am a postdoc in the lab I’m in because we work on these kinds of problems).
Great point! This kind of synergy between molecular analyses and morphology, evolution, etc. is where the future is (and the present too). I’m not a fan of dismissing molecular biology, as many morphologists still do (out of resentment for being dismissed themselves, partly). Big tent biology means everything matters.
Additionally, I think a large proportion of scientists (especially those that don’t work on medicine) need to do a better job of talking about WHY their research is important to the public. I think this is a big reason why funding has/is decreased/decreasing for morphology and other historical type fields. We mostly all understand why our research is important, but that doesn’t mean the general population does.
[…] bushy evolution of Darwin and his successors (e.g. Gould). To a modern evolutionary morphologist, Owen’s “transcendental morphology” echoes of earlier continental European work by Oken […]
[…] fat. It’s an alien organ to us. Let’s face it, the tail gets the short shrift when it comes to morphological, functional and evolutionary studies in tetrapod vertebrates. There are notable exceptions such as […]
[…] posted the above photo once before, but didn’t explain any of the fun details of artist-designer Thomas Thwaites‘s visit […]