Voltsit O V, Pavlinov I Ia
Parazitologiia. 1996 Jul-Aug;30(4):292-301.
It is shown that morphological characters, such as a form of gnathosoma, usually considered as qualitative one, may be properly analyzed on a quantitative basis by means of the geometrical morphometric methods. In particular, an extraction of relative warps (RW) from a shape variation using TPSRW computer program makes it possible to run standard statistical procedures over matrices of RW values. This approach is demonstrated by the analysis of gnathosoma shape differences in 4 Ixodes species and 3 Dermacentor species, with a discriminant analysis being employed as a statistical routine. It is shown that differences among I. persulcatus and I. ricinus are statistically significant (by F-criterium) in all ontogenetic phases, while in the case of I. laguri and I. redikorzevi this is true only for the larval phase. Magnitudes of the gnathosoma shape variation among species (by F criterium) are similar within both Ixodes (s, str.) and Serdjukovia subgenera. The differences among subgenera of the genus Dermacentor are more significant.
结果表明，形态特征，如通常被视为定性特征的颚体形态，可以通过几何形态测量方法在定量基础上进行恰当分析。特别是，使用TPSRW计算机程序从形状变异中提取相对变形（RW），使得对RW值矩阵进行标准统计程序成为可能。通过对4种硬蜱属物种和3种革蜱属物种的颚体形状差异进行分析，并采用判别分析作为统计程序，证明了这种方法的有效性。结果表明，全沟硬蜱和蓖麻硬蜱在所有个体发育阶段的差异具有统计学意义（通过F检验），而拉氏硬蜱和雷氏硬蜱仅在幼虫阶段存在这种差异。硬蜱属（狭义）和塞尔久科维亚铁蜱亚属内物种间颚体形状变异的幅度（通过F检验）相似。革蜱属亚属间的差异更为显著。
