TY - JOUR ID - 25621 TI - Morphological comparison of fourteen species of the genus Meriones Illiger, 1811 (Rodentia: Gerbillinae) from Asia and North Africa JO - Iranian Journal of Animal Biosystematics JA - IJAB LA - en SN - 1735-434X AU - Darvish, Jamshid AD - Rodentology Research Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran Y1 - 2011 PY - 2011 VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 49 EP - 74 KW - Meriones species KW - morphology KW - phylogeny DO - 10.22067/ijab.v7i1.25506 N2 - Genus Meriones is the dominant member of gerbils in the Palaearctic region, particularly in aride region of Asia. This is also one of the most typical genus of subfamily Gerbillinae with about 17 morphospecies namely: M. persicus, M. hurrianae, M. zarudnyi M. vinogradovi, M. meridianus, M. libycus, M. crassus, M. tristrami, M. rex, M. tamariscinus, M. unguiculatus, M. shawi, M. grandis, M. sacramenti, M.dahli, M.chengi, M.arimalius . Of which first eight species have been recorded from the Iranian Plateau. There are minor differences between some species and hence, interspecific discrimination of specimens from each species is not always possible, even by polytechnic methods using different taxonomic characters such as tympanic bullae, suprameatal triangle and external characters on material frommuseums and dental characters on archeozoological materials. Here, 26 morphological characters of 384 museum specimens belonging to 14 morphospecies of Meriones from North Africa, Iran and Central Asia were studied. This study review, 14 species of Meriones and based on the results, it seems that M.libycus, M. crassus and M. meridianus are complex species and need taxonomic revision. The cladistics analysis shows that M. vinogradovi could be forming ancestral species of genus Meriones, and west of Caspian Sea could be the center of origin for Meriones. Due to the presence of convergence regarding adaptation of different species of Meriones to similar environment, subgeneric morphological characters may cause homoplasies and paraphyletic subgenera the analysis of morphological character states matrix, using Mix program of Phylip shows different four clades that did not conform to the nominative subgenera and unveil probable homoplasy.  UR - https://ijab.um.ac.ir/article_25621.html L1 - https://ijab.um.ac.ir/article_25621_89aa8a340a6167c612bc00101f512f26.pdf ER -