Primate Phenotypes: A Multi-Institution Collection of 3D Morphological Data Housed in MorphoSource

Abstract

The field of phenomics is experiencing unprecedented advances thanks to the rapid growth of morphological quantification based on three-dimensional (3D) imaging, online data repositories, team-oriented collaborations, and open data-sharing policies. In line with these progressions, we present an extensive primate phenotypic dataset comprising >6,000 3D scans (media) representing skeletal morphologies of 386 individual specimens covering all hominoid genera (except humans) and other selected primates. The digitized specimens are housed in physical collections at the American Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Natural History, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium), the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Stony Brook University. Our technical validation indicates that despite the diverse digitizing devices used to produce the scans, the final 3D models (meshes) can be safely combined to collect comparable morphometric data. The entire dataset (and detailed associated metadata) is freely available through MorphoSource. Hence, these data contribute to empowering the future of primate phenomics and providing a roadmap for future digitization and archiving of digital data from other collections.