Pine marten and stone marten: morphological and genetic differences in comparison

TL;DRAbstract

The <em>status</em> of these two ?twin? species in Italy is extremely different; stone marten is widely spread throughout the entire peninsula, while absent in the islands, pine marten is spread in Sardegna, Sicilia and Isola d'Elba, but its distribution in the peninsula is very fragmented. Such a situation allows presuming a competition between the two species, where the beech marten comes out as the ?winner?. This information points out the possibility of conservation programs to preserve the pine marten and to contain the stone marten. Thus it is of primary the necessity of an unmistakable differential taxonomical diagnosis between the two species. Objective difficulties in the identification and recognition of these Mustelids are already known. Thus a program of genetic characterization of pine and stone marten is being performed, also to prove the existence of effectively discriminating morphological characters. Up to now, 24 individuals were been analyzed from Toscana

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