How giant are giant armadillos? The morphometry of giant armadillos (Priodontes maximus Kerr, 1792) in the Pantanal of Brazil

Publication date: Available online 21 December 2018Source: Mammalian BiologyAuthor(s): Arnaud Leonard Jean Desbiez, Gabriel Favero Massocato, Danilo Kluyber, Camila Do Nascimento, Nina AttiasAbstractMorphometrics is the quantitative study of organisms shape and size. Intrinsic (e.g. age and sex) and extrinsic (e.g. abiotic conditions) factors can be related to morphological diversity and can aid in the study of species biology and ecology. Giant armadillos have rarely been captured in the wild and very little is known about the species. Here we aimed to characterize body measurements of free-living giant armadillos (Priodontes maximus) in mid-western Brazil and evaluate how these measurements vary between sexes and age classes to gain insights on the species biology and ecology. We captured 28 armadillos in the study area, 18 adults (9 males, 9 females) and 10 subadults (6 males, 4 females) and assessed twenty-five different morphometric measurements for each captured armadillo. To evaluate if age class and sex of adult individuals can be differentiated by a concise set of morphometric measurements we used Linear Discriminant Analyses. We encountered significant morphometric differentiation between age classes and report seven parameters that best discriminate individuals between age classes which may allow the identification of individual’s age class in future studies. The wide morphometric variation in subadults could indicate that individuals have a long developmental pr...
Source: Mammalian Biology - Category: Biology Source Type: research