Functional morphology of benthic foraminiferal shells, envelopes of cells beyond measure

The morphological diversity of the foraminifera is so extensive that it can not be kept present, as an almost infinite series of pictures, in the memory of a single mind. Therefore, abstraction is necessary to handle all the wealth of information provided by the fossil record. The first and most important step of abstraction, beyond depicting the morphology in two-dimensional pictures on paper, consists of its description by words. A diagnosis of a taxon reduces the complex, three-dimensional reality, by the application of predefined rules, to a series of words pointing out the qualitative traits and patterns common to all individuals belonging to a taxon, preferably at generic and higher taxonomic levels. In a next step of abstraction, biometry may help to quantify trends in proportions or sizes, which are particularly important to describe adaptional trends in geologic time or ecological gradients on the specific level.