Abstract
Thekaryotype, C-banding, and nucleoar organizer regions (NORs) of eight specimens ofKonya wild sheepfrom Turkey were examined. The complement included six large metacentric autosomes, 46 acrocentric autosomes of decreasing size, a medium-sized acrocentric X chromosome, and a small bi-armed Y chromosome (the diploid chromosome number 2n=54, the number of autosomal arms NFa=58, the number of chromosome arms NF=61). G-banding allowed reliable identification of all the chromosome pairs and the pairing of homologous elements. All the autosomes possessed distinct centromeric or pericentromeric C-positive bands. The X chromosome had a pericentromeric C-positive band, and the Y chromosome was entirely C-heterochromatic. The NORs were located in the terminal regions of the long arms of three metacentric and two acrocentric autosomes. The karyotype of the Konya wild sheep and its banding patterns are quite similar to chromosome complement reported in domestic sheep and European mouflon.
Highlights
The systematics of the genus Ovis (Linnaeus, 1758) is rather complicated and there are different opinions in respect of the number of species and the actual species borders (Nadler et al 1973a, b, Shackleton et al 1997, Grubb 2005)
We provide detailed description of the karyotype of the Konya wild sheep, a possible ancestor of domestic sheep, using various chromosome banding techniques
The X chromosome was a large acrocentric with a distinct short arm, whereas the Y chromosome was metacentric and the smallest element of the complement (NF=61)
Summary
The systematics of the genus Ovis (Linnaeus, 1758) is rather complicated and there are different opinions in respect of the number of species and the actual species borders (Nadler et al 1973a, b, Shackleton et al 1997, Grubb 2005). For the domestic sheep a large number of possible ancestral species and subspecies exist, and several Eurasian wild sheep Candidates for wild ancestors of the European lineage of domestic sheep are populations found in Turkey and western Iran.
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