Morphmetric comparison of fourteen species of the genus Meriones Illiger, 1811 (Gerbillinae, Rodentia) from Asia and North Africa

In order to determine the interspecific differences, morphometric characters ofexternal, skull and tooth row variables- of different populations of fourteenspecies of Jird: Meriones persicus; M. rex; M. hurrianae; M. tristrami; M. tamariscinus;M. vinogradovi; M. meridianus; M. unguiculatus; M.crassus; M. shawi; M. sacramenti; M.libycus. M. zarudnyi and M. grandis were investigated in a wide range from NorthAfrica to Central Asia. The material came from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel,Morocco, Jordan, Russia, Mongolia, and Turkmenistan.Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed, euclidian distance betweensamples was computed and the corresponding distance matrix was used torepresent a dendrogram and unrooted tree using the Minimum Spanning Treealgorithm.The length of hind foot, ear, mandible and auditory bulla are highly important inmaking distinction between the species. The ratio of tympanic bulla length to thelength of skull shows the presence of two adaptive groups: One with relativelysmall tympanic bulla which include M. persicus, M. tristrami, M. vinogradovi, M. shawi,M. grandis, M. zarudnyi, M. rex, M. sacramenti and M. hurrianae and the other withrelatively large bulla which include M. crassus, M. libycus, M. tamariscinus, M.meridianus and M. unguiculatus. The Minimum Spanning Tree method showed thatall species of Jird could be regrouped into two branches: one with small, and theother with medium and large overall size. This difference may reflect geographicand adaptive statue of different species of Jirds.