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not, we can analyze them separately. Even though PLS does not test the hypothesis that a
block constitutes an integrated unit, it may provide a more informed dissection than one
based purely on anatomical conventions.
Clearly, we need additional methodological research
we should not be limited to the
methods currently available when others are feasible. We also need to complement the
methodological investigations by a discussion of what our concepts mean. If we do not,
we may find that we have a rich array of methods that all do something interesting, but
none that do what we intended. It can be bewildering to read discussions about morpho-
metric characters, because it sometimes appears that nearly every author has a different
idea of the meaning of “character” (as well of “morphometric”). Until we can define “char-
acter” precisely, in terms just as comprehensible to mathematicians as to systematists, we
will not make further progress towards a mathematical solution. We also need more than
a definition of the term; we need to articulate more fully the process by which we find
characters, in general. Most discussions of systematic methods focus on how to analyze
the data, given the data matrix. Our problem is to get that matrix in the first place. One
value of morphometric data is that we find them using mathematical methods, and these
are necessarily explicit. By making our methods of character analysis explicit, just like our
methods of phylogenetic inference, we will enhance the rigor of morphological systematics
in general.
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