This coming Friday, I’m excited to welcome Tristan Stayton to town for a seminar titled “Biomechanics on the half shell: the morphological and mechanical evolution of turtle shells.”  Tristan has been doing cutting edge work on morphometrics, biomechanics, and evolutionary convergence since his days as a graduate student at the University of Chicago.  Now on the faculty at Bucknell University, Tristan continues to produce thoughtful work on these topics.  Some links to recent papers are below.

Stayton, C. T. (2009) Applications of thin-plate spline transformations to finite element models, or, how to turn a bog turtle into a spotted turtle to analyze both. Evolution 63:1348-1355 [doi link]

Stayton, C. T. (2008) Is convergence surprising? An examination of the frequency of convergence in simulated datasets. Journal 0f Theoretical Biology 252:1-14 [doi link]

Stayton, C. T. (2007) Testing hypotheses of convergence with multivariate data: morphological and functional convergence among herbivorous lizards. Evolution 60:824-841 [doi link]