Data and scripts from: Analyzing ontogenetic changes in Cupressaceae seed cone size

Ontogenetic shape change has long been recognized to be important in generating patterns of morphological diversity and may be especially important in plant reproductive structures. We explore how seed cone disparity in Cupressaceae changes over ontogeny by comparing pollination-stage and mature cones.
 
We sampled cones at pollen release and seed release and measured cone scales using basic morphometric shape variables. We used multivariate statistical methods, particularly hypervolume overlap calculations, to measure morphospace occupation and disparity.
 
Cone scales at both pollination and maturity exhibit substantial variability, although disparity is greater at maturity. Mature cone scales are also more clustered in trait space, showing less overlap with other taxa than at pollination. These patterns reflect two growth strategies that generate closed cones over maturation, either through thin laminar scales or relatively thick, peltate scales, resulting in two distinct regions of ..., , , # Data and scripts from: Analyzing ontogenetic changes in Cupressaceae seed cone size
\[Access this dataset on Dryad] (10.5061/dryad.9zw3r22nb)

```
An analysis of how inter-taxon morphological disparity changes across ontogeny in Cupressaceae seed cone scales. The dataset consists of measurements of the cone scales of 10 species of conifers with multiple cones per species.

Analysis is primarily done through the creation of hypervolumes from the 3-dimensional measurements of cone scales then comparing the resulting hypervolumes to contextualize both total morphospace occupance, via overlaps with the aggregate of each developmental stage, as well as morphospace position, via taxon-to-taxon overlap scores. Scores are measured via a calculated Jaccard Index Score.

Code within the dataset is provided for the generation of these hypervolumes and overlap scores, for the creation of three sampling curves gauging how additional cones contribute to overall morphological disparity within a spec...