| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 動物科學系所 === 105 === Hwamei birds are distributed over the south of China, northern Indochina, Hainan and Taiwan. The Hwameis were described as three subspecies. Hwamei in Taiwan (Garrulax. canorus taewanus) is distinct from the other two subspecies (G. c. canorus and G. c. owstoni) because of lacking the white eye ring and eyebrow. Taiwan Hwamei has been recognized as an independent species in 2006. Later, the other two Hwamei subspecies as well as Taiwan Hwamei have been assigned to a new genus called Leucodioptron. The legal trade and illegal smuggling of Chinese Hwamei (L. canorus) into Taiwan may have caused the occurrence of hybridization between Taiwan Hwamei and L. canorus in the field. We recorded the morphological characteristics and collected the blood sample from wild Hwamei populations in different locations of Taiwan. A total of 16 morphological characteristics were recorded: the length of body, length of wing, maxima of wing length, length of tail feather, whole head length, length of bill, width of bill, length of tarsus, width of tarsus, length of digit 1 to digit 3, width of digit 1, the body mass, and in particular, the existence of eye ring or eyebrow. Due to the limited blood samples, we performed whole genome amplification (WGA) on all genomic DNA samples and then used these WGA products as templates for our polymerase chain reactions (PCRs). We amplified the 5 mitochondrial genes (CYTB, ATP6, ATP8, COII and ND2) and 17 [‘autosomal regions, and subsequently the next generation sequencing (NGS) and Sanger sequencing were used to generate their sequences. Our results of morphological analyses showed the significant differences of the length of wing, maxima of wing length, length of tail feather, whole head length, length of tarsus and width of digit 1 between males and females. Based on the sequence analyses, we found that the estimates of nucleotide diversity (π) and genetic diversity (θw) for each of mitochondrial genes in our Hwamei populations were higher than those in the Chinese Hwamei or Taiwan Hwamei species investigated in the past studies. These results suggested that the individuals from our Hwamei populations collected from different locations in Taiwan might be an outcome of the introgression caused by Chinese Hwamei. We further constructed the neighbor-joining (NJ) tree to reveal the genetic relationship among the individuals from different locations. In this study, we were unable to find the clear correlation between our NJ tree result and morphological characteristics or locations, suggesting that this uncertainty might result from the possible hybridization occurring between endemic Taiwan Hwamei and invasive Chinese Hwamei. Moreover, we would suggest that the removal of individuals with eye ring or eyebrow might be applicable to preserve the unique appearance of Taiwan Hwamei.
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