Morphometrical, Biometrical and Karyological Analayses on Subspecies of Meriones tristrami (Thomas, 1892) in Iran

Abstract

In this study ,three subspecies of Meriones tristrami blacleri,Meriones tristrami lycaon and Meriones tristrami intraponticus which were recorded from Iran were evaluated by means of morphological (n = 45).According to the morphological evaluations , M.t.blckleri with marked white tail tip appears to be more diverged one among these subspecies. The statistical analyses was carried out with PCA and DFA methods and the biometric differences were determined the difference among the subspecies . Thus, of the characteristics measured , tail length, T x 100/HB ,hind food length ,interorbital width, occipitonasal length, mastoid width and palatal length, were found to be distinguishing characteristics among subspecies. According to UPGMA cluster, Mt.blackleri and M.t.intraponticus are closer each other , and M.t.lycaon is connected to this group and is the most diverged subspecies. All the subspecies have 72 number of chromosome, and number of fundamental arm (NF) is 76 in blackleri, 82 in lycaon , 84 in intraponticus

Keywords

• Biometry, karyology, chromosome, Iran