Disparity, the diversity of form and function of organisms, can be assessed from cladistic or phenetic characters, and from discrete characters or continuous characters such as landmarks, outlines, or ratios. But do these different methods of assessing disparity provide comparable results? Here we provide evidence that all metrics correlate significantly with each other and capture similar patterns of morphological variation. We compare three methods of capturing morphological disparity (discrete characters, geometric morphometric outlines and geometric morphometric landmarks) in coelurosaurian dinosaurs. We standardize our study by focusing all our metrics on the mandible, so avoiding the risk of confounding disparity methods with anatomical coverage of the taxa. The correlation is strongest between the two geometric morphometric methods, and weaker between the morphometric methods and the discrete characters. By using phylogenetic simulations of discrete character and geometric morphometric data sets, we show that the strength of these correlations is significantly greater than expected from the evolution of random data under Brownian motion. All disparity metrics confirm that Maniraptoriformes had the highest disparity of all coelurosaurians, and omnivores and herbivores had higher disparity than carnivores.

中文翻译：

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兽脚类动物颌骨的形态差异：比较离散特征和几何形态测量学

差异，即生物体形式和功能的多样性，可以从分支或表型特征以及离散特征或连续特征（例如地标、轮廓或比率）进行评估。但是，这些评估差异的不同方法是否提供了可比较的结果？在这里，我们提供证据表明所有指标彼此显着相关，并捕捉到相似的形态变化模式。我们比较了三种捕捉虚骨龙类恐龙形态差异的方法（离散特征、几何形态测量轮廓和几何形态测量标志）。我们通过将所有指标集中在下颌骨上来标准化我们的研究，从而避免将差异方法与分类群的解剖覆盖混淆的风险。两种几何形态测量方法之间的相关性最强，并且在形态测量方法和离散特征之间较弱。通过使用离散特征和几何形态测量数据集的系统发育模拟，我们表明这些相关性的强度显着大于布朗运动下随机数据演变的预期。所有差异指标都证实，手盗龙目在所有虚骨龙类中差异最大，杂食动物和食草动物的差异大于食肉动物。