Geometric morphometric analysis of New Zealand rabbit Cranium

In the research, it was aimed to determine the shape of the skull of the New Zealand rabbit by geometric morphometric method according to gender. In the study, 20 New Zealand rabbit skulls, including 10 male and 10 female rabbits, were used. After the rabbit cranium was boiled and macerated, the skull was photographed from the ventral, dorsal, lateral aspect and the mandible from the lateral aspect. Using TpsUtil and TpsDig2 programs, 15 homologous landmarks were marked on the skull photographs in the ventral direction, 14 in the dorsal direction, 14 in the lateral direction, and 10 in the lateral direction in the mandible photographs. By applying superimposition with the PAST (Version 4.02) program, principal component analysis and relative warp analysis were performed on new coordinates. Morphoj software was used to determine the shape differences of the marked landmarks. According to Principal Components analysis, ventral, dorsal, and lateral views of New Zealand rabbit skull and lateral views of mandible, male and female rabbits were not concentrated in a certain region in the first principal component analysis graph. Therefore, no significant gender difference was found according to principal component analysis. According to the first principal component analysis, the total shape differences in the ventral, dorsal, lateral, and lateral views of the skull were explained 57.225%, 34.813%, 42.427%, and 31.1147%, respectively. The highest variation among principal component analyzes belonged to PCA1 (57.225%) determined in ventral images. As a result of the relative distortion analysis, the variation value among female rabbits (RWA1: 70.44%) was determined the most on ventral images, and in male rabbits (RWA1: 50.55%) the most on lateral images. As a result, we believe that the data obtained will contribute to the studies on geometric morphometric analysis to be applied on rabbit species and skulls, and to archaeological research. Keywords: Geometric Morphometry, Relative Warp Analysis, Principal Component Analysis, New Zealand Rabbit