Geographical variation in the skeletal morphology of red jungle fowl

ABSTRACT

1. The skulls and postcranial skeletons of the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) were compared osteometrically between the populations from North and South Vietnam, North and Central Laos and Southeast Bangladesh. The populations include the three subspecies of G. g. spadiceus, G. g. gallus and G. g. murghi and were sampled to reveal the geographical morphological variations among populations in G. gallus.

2. The morphometric characteristics of subspecies murghi could be clearly distinguished from those of the other subspecies using a canonical discriminant analysis. However, the size and shape of the skull of the gallus population from South Vietnam were not statistically different from that of the subspecies spadiceus from North Laos. The canonical discriminant scores also clearly indicated that there were morphological similarities in the skulls of the populations from North Laos and South Vietnam.

3. From the results, therefore, it is concluded that red jungle fowls do not exhibit high levels of osteometric variation between geographical localities at least within the Indochinese Peninsula.

4. This contrasts with previous studies which have described these subspecies as having various external morphological differences and have argued that zoogeographical barriers exist between the north and south areas of the Indochinese Peninsula.

KEYWORDS:

• geographical variation
• osteometry
• red jungle fowl
• skeleton
• skull

Acknowledgements

The curatorial works about the specimens in this study were encouraged by Japanese Society for the Study of H. I. H. Prince Akishinonomiya Collections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.​​​​

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Funding

This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number [16K15057] from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).