-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Question about integration indices compared at a common level of sampled population variance Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 14:41:49 -0400 From: Makedonska, Jana <jmakedon...@albany.edu> To: morphmet@morphometrics.org <morphmet@morphometrics.org> Dear Morphometricians, I would like to inquire if some of you are familiar with a method for comparing magnitudes of morphological integration between species at a common level of sampled population variance. This method was first presented in Young et al. (2010) Development and the evolvability of the human limbs (PNAS 107) and subsequently applied to cranial integration in papers such as this by Shirai and Marroig (2010). If you are familiar with this method, I would like to ask how to interpret the following results: Two species have integration indices (ICVs in my case calculated as the standard deviation in eigenvalues divided by the mean eigenvalue) whose bootstrap distributions extensively overlap, yet their bootstrap distributions for the average trait coefficients of variation differ significantly from each other. As expected, both species show a positive association between the integration indices and average trait CVs (although the slope is quite steep). Would this result mean that the species characterized by a lower average trait CV has a more integrated structure, because its significantly less variable traits co-vary more consistently to produce a similar integration magnitude? Thanks very much in advance for your input! Best regards, Jana
