6533b82afe1ef96bd128cab7

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Morphometrics of the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus, Mammalia, Rodentia) in the Mediterranean

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Abstract Sexual dimorphism, ontogenetic variation and allometric shape changes related to variation in size were considered and eliminated before performing discriminant analyses on geographic variation of Apodemus sylvaticus in central Mediterranean areas. Preliminary multivariate analyses of A. sylvaticus populations showed influences of sex and age in the ordination results. Giantism, i.e. size increase and shape‐related change, was more pronounced on islands like Pantelleria and Marettimo. By principal component analysis, we found an allometric factor which proved statistically correlated to insularity parameters (area, distance from mainland, and altitude) but not to the number of predator and competitor species in the seven islands. Application of Burnaby's procedure permitted a ‘size‐free’ multivariate analysis, (canonical variate analysis and related Mahalanobis distances, their UPGMA clustering and minimum spanning tree), which showed ordination of populations independent of within‐group size var...