Taxonomic study of 6 iranian Merinones species (Muridae,Rodentia)

The purpose of this research is study of external, cranial and dental character differences between species of the Genus Meriones, discover the important characters which insulate species from each other and discover environment effects of external and cranial differences between species. The genus Meriones is one of the members of the known Subfamily Gerbillinae which has 103 species.The Genus Meriones has 16 species which eight of them exist in iran.This six species include, M.persicus, M.libycus, M.crassus, M.tristrami, M.meridianus and M.hurrianae.Regarding the results of this study we understood that apparent specific characters like,the nail color,the pes color and the end of the tail can verify the species and cranial characters like suprameatal triangle,auditory capsule and meatus type can do the same.On the basis of morphometric studies, cranial characters like occipitonasal and auditory capsule length,and morphological characters like the tail length play a role in inter species diversity.Survey the specimens of Natural History Museum(NHM),identify the unknown species of NHM,scrutiny the jird specimens from south of Tehran and using TPS software for measuring the tooth for the first time, is the consequence of this investigation. Therefore, we can conclude that these morphologic and morphometric characters that has surveyed could show inter-species distinction.