Geographical Variations Of Morphological Characters In Lepus Capensis

The relationship between the morphology, the skull characteristical of Lepus capensis and the geographical factors has been studied in this paper, basically investigated the classification of Lepus capensis. In 2008, totally 224 Lepus capensis were taken from 27 areas in 10 provinces including Shaanxi, Qinghai, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Jiangxi.SPSS13.0 has been used to analysis the correlation between the body indicators (weight, length, ear length and hind foot length) and skull characteristical (totally 26 characteristical including: Profile length PL, Condylobasal length CL, Occipitionasal length OL, Basilar length BL, Greatest length of the nasals GLN, Median palatal length MPL, Post palatal width PPW, Width of tympanic bulla WTB, Length of tympanic bulla LTB, Distance between thtympanic bulla DTB, Mandibular length ML and Oral height of the verticaramus OHV) of Lepus capensis and environmental factors such as morphological indicators altitude, longitude, latitude, annual average temperature, in which case the Geographic Variation of the morphology of Lepus capensis from some areas of China was clarified. The classification analysis of the similarity of Lepus capensis subspecies has also been done in this paper, the main conclusions were as followed:1. Obvious geographic differentiation could be found in Lepus capensis, there wasn't significant differences in shape and skull variables on gender.2. Through the correlation analysis on physical variables of Lepus capensis it could be obtained that body weight(r = 0.325, P <0.01),body length(r = 0.163, P <0.05) and ear length(r =0.562, P<0.01)were significantly positive correlated with elevation while negative correlated with longitude; body weight(r=-0.183, P<0.05)and ear length(r=-0.321,P<0.01)were negatively correlated with mean annual temperature. Be consistent with Bergmann rule, the size of Lepus capensis in areas with high elevation and low temperature was larger than it in areas of high temperature. The length of hind foot was negatively related to elevation, while no significant correlation could be found between physical variables and latitude.3. The analysis of the geographical factor and Lepus capensis skull. Lepus capensis skull from each acquisition area showed that, most of the skull were positively related to elevation. the Qinghai region with the highest altitude(Max = 3750m)had the highest Lepus capensis skull measurements compared to other regions; most variables were significantly negatively related with mean annual temperature and longitude and it was consistent with Bergmann,which said that in order to reduce the heat dissipation in high temperature and low altitude areas, the size of animals was relatively larger.4. The analysis of the environment of Lepus capensis showed that, the food resources and the interspecific competition to some extent influenced the morphological variation of Lepus capensis. Food resources played a decisive role, while the niche environment had a certain significance in the study of bio-geographical variation.5. To study the similarity of the Lepus capensis subspecies from acquisition area via clustering analysis, the results showed that the Lepus capensis swinhoe(homas, 1894),epus capensis tolai(allas, 1778) and Lepus capensis qinghaiensis(Luo, 1982) of Lepus capensis were similar to each other with little differences, while they had a long distance with the Lepus capensis aurigineus(Hvollister, 1912)and the relationship was far. According to analysis, this differentiation of Lepus capensis subspecies was mainly because of the differences of climate and geographical environment.