Morphological Characterization of Libyan Barbary Sheep
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54172/xhyn3e85Abstract
The objective of this study was to morphometric characterize the Libyan Barbary sheep to determine if sheep located in eastern, western, central and southern regions belong to same population. Ten qualitative and eleven quantitative characteristics of 853 rams and 3008 ewes from the above mentioned regions were used for this study. The Libyan Barbary sheep are medium size sheep belong to the fat-tailed and carpet wool type, the coat mostly white in color. The overall mean of Head Length, Horn length, High at wither, Chest girth, Canon circumference, Body length, Ear length, staple length, Tail length, Teat length and Scrotum circumference were 11.9, 56.52, 72.65, 92.14, 8.33, 72.06, 13.92, 8.29, 42.55, 2.63 and 29.8 cm, respectively. Analysis of variance results showed that there is a significant effect of region and gender on the measurements. Variance components procedure resulted in all traits showing a high degree of intra-region (residual) variability. Head length, body length, Wither height and chest girth have more discriminant power than the others between sub-populations. The all pairwise distances between regions were highly significant (P < 0.001), with distances ranged between 0.8 and 3.62, and the canonical discriminant analyses showed that the groups differ on the linear combination of the measured variables. Although the Libyan Barbary Sheep under study is geographically dispersed, they exhibit remarkable phenotypic similarities, and they may belong to the same population. Molecular genetic analysis is required to verify the phenotypic description in future studies.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Abdulkarim Ahtash, F. M. Abousaq, M. M. Edahmani, H. Agoob, O. K. Alsibae, I. Ibrahim, A. Shiba, K. M. Abdulkarim, A. M. Targy, A. A. Tarhuni, H. A. Alfaleedni, M.A. Ashteba, A. Mahmod, A. Eltashani, E. Zaatot, S. A. Shaykh, M. H. Abounouwarah, N. A. Aboubareeq (Author)
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