Since childhood, each of us knows that morphology is an important section of grammar. However, this concept has one more meaning. What is morphology in biology? You will learn about this from our article.
Morphology in biology
Biology is a comprehensive science of life. It includes a number of disciplines. One of them is morphology. In biology, this is the science of the structure of organisms. The author of this concept is Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a world famous poet and natural scientist from Germany. His many works concern the study of the external characteristics of plants, comparative anatomy, the concept of homologous organs and metamorphoses.
The Russian academician Alexei Nikolayevich Severtsov continued to study this concept and its evolutionary significance. He is the founder of animal morphology. Based on the comparative embryological method, the scientist created a hypothesis of the origin of vertebrates and provided a number of its evidence. Together with his student Ivan Ivanovich Schmalgauzen, he also proposed the concept of morphological progress and regression as factors of evolution.
Endonomy
Morphology, as a biological discipline, includes two main areas. The first of them studies the features of the external structure. It is possible to explain more precisely what morphology studies in biology: the distinguishing features of various organisms. These include the shape, size, color, number of structures that make up the body. Morphological criterion is one of the factors determining species affiliation.
For a long time he generally remained the only one. But further studies convinced scientists of the partial inaccuracy of this criterion. For example, in nature there are a sufficient number of animals that are characterized by sexual dimorphism. This phenomenon consists in the fact that males and females of the same species are significantly different from each other in appearance. These include peacocks, pheasants, chickens and roosters, guppy fish.
Anatomy
The second section, which includes morphology in biology, studies the internal structure of organisms. It is called anatomy. This area of morphology considers the structure at organization levels that are above the cellular. These include tissue and body. The main focus of this science is the anatomy of plants, animals and humans.
At various stages of embryonic development, scientists also study the internal structure of organisms of various systematic groups, comparing them. This allowed us to formulate the concepts of homo- and similar organs. Examples of the former are the forelimbs of birds and a whale. In birds, they are turned into wings, and aquatic mammals use them as flippers. However, the origin of these structures is single. The existence of such organs indicates the presence of a single ancestor in animals that have them.
By analogy are parts of the body that have similar functions, but of different origin. Their examples are wings of birds and insects. In the former, these are modified forelimbs. But the wings of insects are derivatives of integuments. The presence of homologous organs indicates the ability of various organisms to adapt to common conditions of existence.
General morphology
In science, you can often find the concept of "general morphology". This section studies the characteristic features of the organism or the whole taxon. For example, all representatives of the Arthropod type have segmented limbs. And based on the number of walking legs, they can already be combined into classes. So, arachnids have four pairs, and insects have three.
So, morphology in biology is a discipline that studies only the structure of organisms. It does not affect the features and conditions of physiological processes. Depending on the subject of research, endonomy, anatomy and general morphology are distinguished.