MorphoTools: a set of R functions for morphometric analysis

A set of R functions for the convenient handling of morphometric analysis is provided. No previous knowledge of R is required. The functions include data import from Excel or tab-delimited text files, descriptive statistics for populations and taxa, histograms of characters, correlation matrices of characters, cluster analysis, principal component analysis, linear discriminant analysis with permutation tests, classificatory discriminant analysis and k-nearest neighbour classification. The use of the functions is demonstrated on a sample data set. Detailed descriptions of the functions and examples of the scripts for producing graphics are included as an electronic appendix. Documentation and function definitions can be downloaded from http://www.prf.jcu.cz/systematics/morphotools.html.