| Comments: | Revised by Groves (1969a), who recognised Trachelocele as a subgenus for G. subgutturosa only. Since then, Eudorcas has been revived (Groves, 2000b) and G. cuvieri, G. leptoceros, and G. subgutturosa have been recognised as a clade (G. subgutturosa group) distinct from G. dorcas and G. erlangeri in sharing 11 unique centric fusions of the autosomes (Vassart et al. 1995) and having similar mitochondrial genes (Rebholz and Harley, 1999). Trachelocele may seem redundant but Gazella may be paraphyletic, as the subgutturosa group could be a sister taxon of Antilope, sharing two unique centric fusions (Vassart et al. 1995), suggesting the possible need to revive Trachelocele. The other species of Gazella may be divided into two groups. In the dorcas group, G. dorcas and G. erlangeri share 9 unique homologous centric fusions, G. spekei is similar to them in the low number of chromosomes; G. arabica and G. gazella should probably be included: a group including G. dorcas, G. gazella and G. spekei is supported, if weakly, by studies of mitochondrial DNA sequences (Rebholz and Harley, 1999). In the bennettii group, G. bennettii and G. saudiya share up to 6 unique homologous centric fusions, with some fission/fusion polymorphism, and are said to be genetically closer to the subgutturosa group than the dorcas group (Kumamoto et al., 1995; Rebholz and Harley, 1999). Status of Palaearctic and Indian species reviewed by Mallon and Kingswood (2001). |
