Biometría mandibular y dentaria de las musarañas del género Sorex Linnaeus, 1758 en la región central y occidental de los Pirineos

Abstract

We have measured 98 mandibles and 717 teeth of shrews of Sorex (Soricidae, Eulipotyphla) of the Aragonian, Navarre and Vasc Pyrenees. The material comes from owl pellets recovered between 1967 and 1969 and takes part of the collection of the Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (IPE-CSIC). The material has been reclassified using osseous criteria, biometrics and discriminant functions, obtaining that these species are Sorex coronatus and Sorex minutus. The study of S. coronatus is interesting because it is similar to S. araneus and Sorex granarius so it is easy to confuse them if we only have bones and teeth. For this reason, people usually group them as Sorex sp. As consequence, the information about them in the Iberian Peninsula is scarce, and especially in Aragón. The analyses of the measurements show that there is a difference among the occidental populations and the oriental zones of the area studied. In general, values decrease to the west; they are larger in the zones with a Mediterranean influence than in the Atlantic ones. The most useful measurements to compare them are the measurements of mandibles. On the other hand, the measurements of teeth allow the comparison with bibliographic data of palaeontological material that consists mainly of incomplete mandibles.