Investigation of the shape of goat (capra hircus) astragalus via geometric morphometry method

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of sex on shape of goat astragalus via geometric morphometry method. A total of 37 astragalus bone samples collected from 16 female and 21 male goats were used as material. Bone samples were cleaned from skin and soft tissue and then macerated by boiling. Astragalus bone samples were photographed from a distance of 20 cm dorsally by focusing on the center of the bone. The photographs were transferred to the computer in JPEG format. Principal Component Analysis, Regression Analysis, Canonical Variate Analysis, and Discriminant Function Analysis were conducted using the Cartesian coordinate values, which were obtained by homologous landmark marking. The first two principal components accounted for 75.967% of the total shape variation. Shape variation was determined in different regions of the astragalus. According to the scatter plot of male and female individuals, male individuals were completely placed within the confidence interval ellipse of female individuals. It was found that allometric effect on the shape of astragalus bone was not statistically significant. As a result of Canonical Variate Analysis, mahalanobis and procrustes distances were detected as 2.9216 (p