Morphology in biology: the meaning of the concept

Since childhood, each of us knows that morphology is the most important part 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 an integrated 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 the world-famous poet and natural scientist from Germany Johann Wolfgang Goethe. His numerous works concern the study of the external features of plants, comparative anatomy, the concept of homologous organs and metamorphoses.

The study of this concept and its evolutionary significance continued with the Russian Academician Aleksei Nikolaevich Severtsov. He is the founder of animal morphology. On the basis of the comparative embryological method, the scientist created the hypothesis of the origin of vertebrates and cited a number of her evidences. Together with his pupil Ivan Ivanovich Schmalhausen, he also proposed the concept of morphological progress and regression as factors of evolution.

Endonomy

Morphology, as a biological discipline, includes two main directions. The first of them studies the features of the external structure. It is more accurate to explain what morphology studies in biology, it is possible so: distinctive features of different organisms. These include the shape, size, color, the number of structures that make up the body. The morphological criterion is one of the factors determining the species affiliation.

For a long time he was the only one at all. But further research has convinced scientists of the partial unreliability of this criterion. For example, in nature there is a sufficient number of animals for which sexual dimorphism is characteristic. This phenomenon consists in the fact that males and females of the same species differ significantly from one another 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 direction of morphology considers the structure at the levels of the organization, which are higher than the cellular one. These include tissue and organism. The main direction of this science is the anatomy of plants, animals and humans.

At different stages of embryonic development, scientists also study the internal structure of organisms of different systematic groups, comparing them. This allowed us to formulate the concepts of homo- and analogous organs. Examples of the first are the front legs of birds and whales. In birds they are turned into wings, and aquatic mammals use them as fins. However, the origin of these structures is unified. The existence of such organs indicates the existence of a common ancestor in animals that have them.

Analogies are parts of the body that have similar functions, but different origins. Their examples are the wings of birds and insects. The first is a modified forelimbs. But the wings of insects are derived from integument. The presence of homologous organs indicates the ability of different organisms to adapt to the same conditions of existence.

General morphology

In science, one often encounters the notion of "general morphology". This section studies the characteristic distinctive features of an organism or a whole taxon. For example, all representatives of the type Arthropoda have segmented limbs. And on the basis of the number of walking legs, they can already be combined into classes. Thus, the arachnids have four pairs, and the 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 the study, they distinguish between endonomy, anatomy and general morphology.