The role of beak shape in octopodid taxonomy

RS Ogden, AL Allcock, PC Watts, JP Thorpe*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Beak shapes in nine species of Southern Ocean octopodids were measured using seven size-standardized ratios. The results were analysed using principal component analysis and discriminant function analysis and show that beak shape may be used as a taxonomic character to distinguish between genera, but not between species. Stepwise discriminant function analysis indicated that all seven ratios were required to maximize discrimination between beaks. A phenogram constructed from a matrix of Mahalanobis distances differed from a dendrogram produced from genetic data. This suggests that, although useful for discrimination, beak morphology is probably not suitable for constructing phylogenies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)29-36
Number of pages8
JournalSouth African Journal of Marine Science
Volume20
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1998
Externally publishedYes

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