THEMORPHOLOGIC CHARACTERS OF HYBRID (MAUREM YS MUTICA ♀ ×CUORA　TRIFASCIATA ♂) AND COM PARISONW ITH THEIR PARENTS

Yellow pond turtle, M auremys mutica and three-striped box turtle, Cuora trifasciata, is classified to Bataguridae, M auremys and Cuora, respectively, they distribute in Southern China1 The two turtles have been artificially-propagated successfully and were cultivated in a small-scale. M auremys iversoni is a new strain nominated by Pritchard in 1991,but in 2001, two research groups leading by Parham and Wink proved that M auremys iversoni was not a species1With different methods, they found that M auremys iversoni may be the hybrid of yellow pond turtle and three2striped box turtle1 In this article, the hybrid of M. mutica (♀) ×C. trifasciata (♂) was acquired successfully, which indicated the hybrid between genus of M auremys and Cuora was feasible. But the rate of fecundation and hatching of M. mutica (♀) ×C.trifasciata (♂) were lower than M. mutica (♀) ×M. mutica (♂). The veins on carapace, the dark patch on plastron, the forepart form and origination of gular scute, the ratio between gular scute width and gular scute seam length, gular scute seam length and humeral scute seam length, femoral scute seam length and anal scute seam length, the skin color of inside of four limbs and tail abdomen of the young hybrid were different from the youngM. mutica. The growth rate of the one year old hybrid was faster than M. mutica in the same culture condition. In morphology of hybrid, the color of calvarias was thin brown-yellow, and it has two black lines behind the eyes, the abdomen of neck was yellow; the carapace was brown and its plastron was thin yellow, each scute of plastron has radiated dark patch, the skin color of inside of four　limbs and tail abdomen of the hybrid were yellow-brown. The analysis ofmorphologic data within three kinds of turtles indicated that the hybrid was more closed to itsmother, M. mutica. Morphologic discriminant formula of three turtleswere　obtained, discriminant analysis indicated that there were significant different among three kinds turtles1 The identification accuracy was 100% (p < 0101). The ratio between second half plastron length, gular scute width, humeral scute seam length, femoral scute seam length, respectively, and carapace length were the highest contributing rate on discriminant analysis, which could be the direct parameter in distinguishing yellow pond turtle, three-striped box turtle and their hybrid. The studywould be benefit to identification of hybrid, turtle breeding and aquaculture.