Phenotypic diversity of Tuscany’s endangered sheep breeds: a canonical discriminant approach

Abstract

The determination of the degree of differentiation of animal populations at breed level is an important issue for conservation purposes. Morphometric divergences can be an indicator of adaptative or selective differences between breeds. In fact, due to the natural and artificial selection that continuously acts on the adaptative traits, the determination of the level of divergence of the quantitative traits across several populations, allows to make inferences on the degree of adaptation to a certain environment or on the productive specialization of a given population. Somatic measures have already been used to estimate the divergence in Italian cattle (Camussi et al., 1985), goat (Cicogna et al., 1995, Herrera et al. 1996) and sheep breeds (Panella et al., 1993)...

Keywords

• morphometric analysis, Mahalanobis’ distances, Pomarancina, Garfagnina Bianca.