Abstract

BETANCUR, Claudia Lorena; AGUILAR, Sandra Bibiana; BARRERA, Carlos Felipe  and  MESA, Henry. CYTOGENETIC AND MOLECULAR SEXING OF PSITTACIDES. Bol. Cient. Mus. Hist. Nat. Univ. Caldas [online]. 2017, vol.21, n.1, pp.112-121. ISSN 0123-3068.  https://doi.org/10.17151/bccm.2017.21.1.9.

The Psittacidae family is one of the groups with the highest population decline due to hunting, habitat fragmentation and degradation. Conservation and reintroduction programs require the identification of gender in all individuals to perform kinship analysis, to estimate demographic parameters and to ensure that releases or reintroduction programs of individuals are more likely to succeed when releasing groups formed by males and females of reproductive age or established couples. Sex differentiation in psittacides presents difficulties due to the absence of sexual dimorphism and because sexing traditional methods are traumatic or require extensive protocols that do not work on juvenile individuals. In this sense, molecular and some cytogenetic tools are effective because they are not invasive and have a greater sensitivity. Both molecular and cytogenetic tools used in this study allowed differentiating between males and females of eight species of psittacines (Amazona amazonica, Amazona festiva, Amazona ochrocephala, Ara ararauna, Ara macao, Ara severa, Aratinga waglerii and Pionus menstruus). Generally speaking, efficiency of the PCR reaction to amplify genes CHD - Z and CHD - W for sampled individuals was 83% (34 of 41 individuals amplified). In a total of 32 individuals of six species of psittacines (Ara ararauna, Ara macao, Amazona festiva, Amazona ochrocephala, Pionus mentruus) the karyotype differentiation was possible in 25 of them representing a sensitivity of 78% for the cytogenetic sexing test. It was not possible to obtain a sufficient number of metaphases to establish the pattern of karyotype for Aratinga wagleri and Ara severa due to the low number of individuals. Psittacides sexing can be done by either of these two methods, although cytogenetic sexing is inconvenient for species that do not have a defined karyotype, as in the case of Ara severa and Aratinga wagleri. Molecular sexing provides a minimally invasive, effective and rapid technique to determine the sex of individuals using primers P2 and P8.

Keywords : dimorphism; karyotype; PCR; Psittacines.

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