Analysis of Morphological Traits of Geographically Separated Population of Indigenous Muscovy Duck (Cairina Moschata)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3923/ijps.2009.179.182Keywords:
Ecotypes, geographically separated population, morphological traits, muscovy duckAbstract
Inter and intra specific variation among muscovy duck ecotypes from three agroecological zones of Nigeria were studied The work evaluate the morphological variation of three ecotypes ( rainforest ecotypes, humid or guinea savanna and dry savanna ecotypes) covering southern or coastal region, central and northern part of Nigeria. Twelve morphological traits including weight were considered. Significant (p<0.05) variation exist within and between ecotypes using population coefficient of variation (ANOVA) bill height had the highest coefficient of variation 79.52 while body length recorded the least variation. There are marked differences in body morphology between sexes in all the ecotypes indicating significant sexual dimorphism. Correlation between the traits were low to high. The inter specific variations in bill structure and body morphology are indication of adaptation to the environment and influence of ecological condition
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2009 Asian Network for Scientific Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
