title: Karyotypic kinship between the blue fox (Alopex lagopus Linn.) and the silver fox (Vulpes fulva Desm.).
abstract: A karyotypic comparison between the blue fox and the silver fox revealed conservation of the chromosome arm as a unit, except for large heterochromatic blocks in 10 pairs of blue fox chromosomes and the complete absence of a common metacentric autosomal pair. This finding seems to indicate that their karyotypes evolved from a common ancestral karyotype, characterized by 70-76 acrocentric autosomes, mainly through a series of independent centric fusions.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002871:Chromosome Banding; D005260:Female; D005589:Foxes / Q000235:genetics*; D007621:Karyotyping; D008168:Lung / Q000166:cytology; D008297:Male; D008677:Metaphase; D013045:Species Specificity