Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist and provost for science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said the system could assess each mammal on the basis of more than 4,500 possible traits, which is 10 times larger than previous databases.
The "function" or adaptive value of a trait refers to the way in which the trait affects the organism's fitness, in comparison to how other possible traits could perform in the organism's current environment.
A quantitative morphology approach (Schnittler et al. 2009, 2013; Beisenova et al. 2015), including measurements on living plants of all ontogenetic stages, is used to quantify possible traits enabling G. graeca to persist in the only temporarily wet vegetation Mediterranean shrub land.
A recent Pew survey found that atheism was the most significant political liability among a range of possible traits -- a trend borne out by the fact that there is not a single avowed atheist currently serving in Congress.
Our results suggest a need for explicitly considering individual tree fecundity and both stem and crown size as possible traits influencing the shape and extent of a species' seed shadow in forests.
Although the 32 traits that were assayed include many aspects of morphology that underwent dramatic change during domestication [26], other possible traits under selection such as kernel amino acid composition or kernel palatability were not assayed.
