Morphological Approach to Genetic Variability of the Asiatic Wild Ass (Equus hemionus) Using Non-metric Skull Characters

Abstract

The Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) is a globally endangered large mammal threatened by competition with livestock, poaching as well as habitat fragmentation and loss. Because of these environmental stresses it can be assumed that the species suff ers from lower developmental stability and that barrier eff ects could cause genetic isolation. To gain more insight into the population genetics of the Asiatic wild ass, a series of 440 skulls found in two Gobi regions of Mongolia were examined. The epigenetic variability and epigenetic distance between the samples as well as their fl uctuating asymmetry were studied by using 62 non-metric skull characters to test and evaluate possible genetic depletion, genetic isolation and the general infl uences during ontogenesis. The high epigenetic variability, I ev = 0.39 did not diff er between the two regions indicating no evidence of genetic depression. The very low, but signifi cant epigenetic divergence of MMD = 0.05 between the Dzungarian Gobi and the Southern Gobi suggests restricted connectivity. The moderate degree of fl uctuating asymmetry (FA = 0.11 -0.15) found gives no signs of reduced developmental stability. Thus, our results suggest that Asiatic wild ass from Mongolia are from genetically viable populations. Lkhagvasuren, D., Batsaikhan, N., Samiya, R., Schafberg, R., Stubbe, A., Stubbe, M. & Ansorge, H. 2015. Morphological approach to genetic variability of the Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) using non-metric skull characters. Mong. J. Biol. Sci., 13(1-2): 3-12.

Epigenetic Variability of the Highly Endangered Przewalski’s Horses in Temporal and Geographical Populations

“…The high degree of epigenetic variability in the Asiatic wild ass was explained by a much higher population size than in PH, and no genetic depression by reproductive isolation or founder eff ects (Lkhagvasuren et al, 2015). This is supported by studies that found a high diversity of microsatellites (Kaczensky et al, 2011), nucleotides and haplotypes (Rosenbom et al, 2015) in Asiatic wild ass.…”

“…The only study of non-metric skull characters in Equidae has been conducted on the Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) (Lkhagvasuren et al, 2015). We selected 76 non-metric skull characters based on this study and additional reports on ungulate species (Markowski & Markowska, 1988;Markowski, 1993) (Figure 1, Table 2).…”

“…There are no signifi cant diff erences between the temporal and geographical samples. (Lkhagvasuren et al, 2015) with I ev = 0.39. We hypothesized that the highly inbred (Bouman & Bos, 1979;Bouman-Heinsdijk, 1982) PH population variability would be low, but the result is surprisingly similar to previously investigated mammal species (Zima, 1989;Ansorge et al, 2012;Lkhagvasuren et al, 2015).…”

“…Until now the majority of studies on epigenetic variability based on non-metric skull characters concerned carnivores and rodents, and were focused on geographical population issues (Ansorge et al, 2009(Ansorge et al, , 2012. Our study is the fi rst assessment of reintroduced PH population morphological genetics, focuses on populations over time and is the second use of non-metric skull characters to study the epigenetics of a species of the Equidae (Lkhagvasuren et al, 2015).…”