Karyotypes of Five Passerine Birds Belonging to Family Ploceidae

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The karyotypes from bone marrow cells of both sexes of Lonchura malabarica, L. malacca, L. punctulata and only males of Ploceus philippinus and Passer domesticus have been analysed. The diploid number and total length of haploid set varied from 78 to 82 and 42.8 μ to 49.0 μ respectively. Great similarities were found among all the species studied here in general and three congeneric species in particular. Although structural rearrangements involving centric fission and fusion as well as centromeric shift and/or pericentric inversion must have been responsible for the differences, the speciation seemed to have occurred without much alterations in the karyotypes as well as in DNA amount and the whole family seems to be much conservative. The sexual Z chromosome, wherever detected, is quite uniform while W chromosome shows an appreciable variation in size and centromeric position. This indicates that much alteration in the size involving reduction or duplication of chromosomal material has occurred during the differentiation of W in different species.