Campana Leonardo, Cruz Letícia Rosário, Paresque Roberta, Fagundes Valéria
Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29.075-910, Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil.
Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29.075-910, Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil.
Zookeys. 2022 Dec 5;1134:1-22. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1134.89587. eCollection 2022.
Glans penis morphology has been used as a powerful tool in mammal taxonomy to differentiate cryptic species. Neotropical rodent species and are cryptic, and interspecific hybrids are like their parental species. We investigated non-metric and metric phallic characters aiming to differentiate from . We also evaluated the parental species' influence of the phallic characters on hybrids. We analysed 96 male adults-56 , 27 , and 13 hybrids, subgrouping species by locality and hybrids by parental species (paternal vs maternal). We verified that and are distinguishable by penile-shape morphology: has an elongated penile form with a flare in the distal portion and has a barrel-shaped form. Also, dark spots in ventral view, if present in , distinguish from . Although the non-metric characters differentiate the species, they do not distinguish the subgroups of , , and hybrids. The metric phallic characters indicated a significant difference between species and hybrids. These characters also differentiate the population groups of . However, subgroups and hybrids subgroups did not present a significant difference. This study shows the importance of penis morphology in the taxonomy of the cryptic rodent species and , representing a powerful tool to discriminate male specimens in mammal collections without karyotyping or sequencing, even though the specimens occurred in sympatric areas. Since most taxidermy protocols do not preserve the penis in mammal preparations, liquid preservation of some specimens or the removal of the penis before taxidermy for liquid preservation could be beneficial. We also recommend the organisation in museum collections of a penis bank for the species group (or even all rodent species) to avoid losing this important information for species identification.
阴茎形态已被用作哺乳动物分类学中区分隐性物种的有力工具。新热带啮齿动物物种 和 是隐性的，种间杂种与它们的亲本物种相似。我们研究了非度量和度量阴茎特征，旨在区分 和 。我们还评估了亲本物种的阴茎特征对杂种的影响。我们分析了96只成年雄性——56只 、27只 和13只杂种，按产地对物种进行分组，按亲本物种（父本与母本）对杂种进行分组。我们证实， 和 可通过阴茎形状形态区分： 具有细长的阴茎形态，远端部分有扩张，而 具有桶状形态。此外，从腹侧观察，如果 存在黑点，则可将其与 区分开来。尽管非度量特征能区分物种，但它们无法区分 、 的亚组以及杂种。度量阴茎特征表明物种和杂种之间存在显著差异。这些特征也能区分 的种群组。然而， 的亚组和杂种亚组没有呈现出显著差异。这项研究表明阴茎形态在隐性啮齿动物物种 和 的分类学中的重要性，它是一种在不进行核型分析或测序的情况下，用于鉴别哺乳动物标本收藏中雄性标本的有力工具，即使这些标本出现在同域分布区域。由于大多数标本制作方案在哺乳动物标本制备中不保留阴茎，对一些标本进行液体保存或在标本制作前移除阴茎以便液体保存可能是有益的。我们还建议在博物馆收藏中为 物种组（甚至所有啮齿动物物种）建立一个阴茎库，以避免丢失这一用于物种鉴定的重要信息。
