Morphological variability of baculum (os penis) in the polecat Mustela putorius
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Date
2009
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Acta zoologica cracoviensia 52A (1-2): 115-120, 2009
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Abstract
Abstract. The study presents the morphological variation in three traits of the baculum (os
penis) in the polecat (Mustela putorius Linnaeus, 1758), based on an analysis of 108
males (7 juveniles and 101 adults) collected in NE Slovakia between 1958-1978. Adult in-
dividuals had a significantly larger baculum (length, width and distal tip size) than juve-
niles. All three measured baculum traits correlated significantly with each other.
However, these relationships only explained from 10% (width . distal tip size relation-
ship) up to 51% (length . width relationship) of the variance between the studied traits.
Therefore, evolutionary analysis based on baculum variation should take into account not
only baculum size, but also base width, which may be a measure of baculum developmen-
tal stage. Moreover, coefficients of variation were 10.2%, 30.2% and 11.4%, respectively
for length, width and distal tip size of the baculum, much greater than the known variation
of cranial measurements. Therefore, more data on the variability among individuals, as
well as between measured traits, are needed for a better understanding of the evolutionary
processes which influence baculum size and shape.
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Keywords
mustela putorius, individual variability, Os penis, Slovakia, age effect