Could you add further information to your question? Is that you are digitizing specimens in tpsDig, and want to add the information about sex to the file that you are digitizing? Or is it that you want to add the variable to the analysis that you are doing in tpsRegr (or in another program in the tps series?). If you are asking whether you can add the variable, Sex, when digitizing in tpsDig, go to the "options" menu. One of them is "Specimen info". If you click on that, you get a new window and you can add comments or a variable to the file. I don't know if that is any easier than just keeping a list that has the specimen number, and noting the sex in that. But you can add that to your tpsDig file if that is what you want to do.

Hi Rebecca,

Not sure why you want to add this in the TPS step, this is just the part defining curves/landmarks. It seems easier to add group labels in the program you do the analysis with. I don't know which software you use, but in R it's quite straightforward to define a vector assigning specimens to sexes and then use it for different coloration in PCA or to calculate mean configs for each group separately etc. I can warmly recommend package geomorph for that purpose, it's very efficient and coding is simple.

Best wishes,

Thomas

Hi Rebecca,

If you are performing your analyses with R you could create an excel sheet with your sex data and other useful information you would like to include in your test, then export this sheet as a csv and import it in R. Pay attention that the specimens needs to be in the same order they appear in your TPS coordinate file.

e.g. data from Boisville et al 2022 "Sexual dimorphism in the walrus mandible: comparative description and geometric morphometrics" (see attached image)Article Sexual dimorphism in the walrus mandible: comparative descri...

If you need an example of R script I attach the one from Boisville et al.

Cheers,

Narimane