Abstract
Photogrammetry (PH) is relatively cheap, easy to use, flexible and portable but its power and limitations have not been fully explored for studies of small animals. Here we assessed the accuracy of PH for the reconstruction of 3D digital models of bat skulls by evaluating its potential for evolutionary morphology studies at interspecific (19 species) level. Its reliability was assessed against the performance of micro CT scan (µCT) and laser scan techniques (LS). We used 3D geometric morphometrics and comparative methods to quantify the amount of size and shape variation due to the scanning technique and assess the strength of the biological signal in relation to both the technique error and phylogenetic uncertainty. We found only minor variation among techniques. Levels of random error (repeatability and procrustes variance) were similar in all techniques and no systematic error was observed (as evidenced from principal component analysis). Similar levels of phylogenetic signal, allometries and correlations with ecological variables (frequency of maximum energy and bite force) were detected among techniques. Phylogenetic uncertainty interacted with technique error but without affecting the biological conclusions driven by the evolutionary analyses. Our study confirms the accuracy of PH for the reconstruction of challenging specimens. These results encourage the use of PH as a reliable and highly accessible tool for the study of macro evolutionary processes of small mammals.
Highlights
The use of digital 3D models in morphological studies is increasing in many scientific disciplines, including palaeontology and evolutionary biology
In analyses of shape and size of objects, the 3D models are often integrated with geometric morphometric methods (GMM)
The nineteen models were reconstructed in 3D with the three different technique and the photogrammetric 3D model of Rhinolophus ferrumequinum (MNHN-ZM-MO-1977-58) can be downloaded as an example from Morphosource
Summary
The use of digital 3D models in morphological studies is increasing in many scientific disciplines, including palaeontology and evolutionary biology. The use of close-range photogrammetry (PH) has grown in many fields because it is economical, portable, easy to apply and accurately reproduces the geometry and colour pattern of real and complex objects (Falkingham 2012) For this reason, it has become widely employed in a variety of disciplines such as biology (Evin et al 2016), palaeontology (Bates et al 2010), anthropology (Katz and Friess 2014) and medicine (Ege et al 2004), among others. In analyses of shape and size of objects (as in biological studies), the 3D models are often integrated with geometric morphometric methods (GMM) This approach has proved useful in bats, where, for example, GMM has provided additional information on divergence of cryptic species (Sztencel-Jabłonka et al 2009). No studies have addressed the utility of PH for this group and other similar sized mammals
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