Morphology, broadly defined as the study of animal form, is a field that helps us understand animal diversity and animal history. For centuries, scientists have been interested in how animals are put together and how the parts work together to make functioning organisms that can run, fly, swim, eat, and survive. Early scientific efforts focused on descriptive methods in which scientists dissected specimens and described the musculoskeletal and other body systems with words and detailed drawings.

As new techniques were developed, scientists began to specialize along the lines of various subdisciplines, including functional morphology and ecological morphology. Morphologists moved beyond what had started as a purely descriptive science and began to ask and answer more complex questions.

Functional morphology emphasizes the mechanics of a particular structure—how it works. For example, a functional morphologist might examine the pattern of musculoskeletal activity involved in an activity such as running...