Fishes and Morphology Today: An Introduction
Our primary goal in organizing the symposium “Fishes and Morphology Today” (Albuquerque, 14–15 July 2013) and editing these symposium proceedings in Copeia is to showcase the results of current morphological studies and their impact on our understanding of different groups of fishes and their evolutionary history. Morphology remains key to taxonomic, systematic, and evolutionary studies of extant and fossil fishes (and all other organisms) as was convincingly illustrated by contributions on extant and fossil fishes presented in the symposium and now in these symposium proceedings. Here we emphasize and promote the value of morphological research. This effort and others from the worldwide fish community, together with genomic and molecular studies, effectively contribute to the Tree of Life of Fishes and to training programs on biodiversity. Without the underpinnings of a morphological perspective in systematics and evolutionary history, there are few engaging questions to ask. Furthermore, the more we know about the morphology, the more engaging the questions become.
Participants (speakers) in the symposium Fishes and Morphology Today, in the 2013 Annual Meeting of American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 14 and 15. 1, B. Reichenbacher (München, Germany); 2, N. Bertrand (College Station, TX); 3, G. D. Johnson (Washington, D.C.); 4, K. Bemis (Ithaca, NY); 5, M. Altner (München, Germany); 6, K. Conway (College Station, TX); 7, M. Ghedotti (Denver, CO); 8, E. Hilton (Gloucester Point, VA); 9, J. Lundberg (Philadelphia, PA); 10, R. Reis (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); 11, C. DoNascimiento (Boyacá, Colombia); 12, C. Baldwin (Washington, D.C.); 13, A. McCune (Ithaca, NY); 14, E. O. Wiley (Lawrence, KS); 15, E. Witten (Ghent, Belgium); 16, G. Arratia (Lawrence, KS); 17, J. Maisey (New York, NY); 18, J. Webb (Kingston, RI); 19, P. Kontantinidis (Gloucester Point, VA); 20, L. Parenti (Washington, D.C.); 21, V. Sant’Anna (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); 22, D. de Santana (Washington, D.C.); 23, T. Pinto Carvalho (Philadelphia, PA); 24, N. Salcedo (Charleston, SC); 25, B. Collette (Washington, D.C.); 26, L. Malabarba (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); 27, J. P. da Silva (São Paulo, Brazil). Photo courtesy of Ai Nonaka.