CONSERVATION OF ARABIAN GAZELLES - Nwrc.gov.sa

12.1 for collection and sighting locations). While Groves and Harrison ( 1967) concluded that Saudi
gazelle, Indian gazelle Gazella bennetli and dorcas gazelle all belong to one species, Gentry (1971 )
argued that Saudi gazelle is congeneric and "maybe even conspecific" with dorcas gazelle and Indian
gazelle. Groves' (1969) idea that the Saudi gazelle is a subspecies of dorcas gazdle has been widely
accepted by several authors (Corbet, 1978; Walther et 01., 1983; Nader, 1989; Kingdon, 1990;
Harrison and Bates, 1991 ). However, Groves (1985) himself later raised the question whether Saudi
gazelle belonged to dorcas gazelle or not, because "it is so different from other (dorcas) races". A
few years later the Saudi gazelle was elevated to specific status (Groves, 1988), while a year after that
(Groves, 1989) he seemed to accept again that it belonged to dorcas gazelle. Another morphological
study on several dorcas gazelle subspecies, including Saudi gazelle from the BMNH (Alados,
198611987), argued that the Saudi gazelle is closely related to Gazella dorcas neglecta of the Western
Sahara, and that the relatedness of these two groups could be due to the parallel evolution of animals
in desert conditions. However, recently Saudi gazelle were reclassified as being different from
dorcas gazelle, using morphological data (Fudey et 01., 1988; Groves, 1988) and cytogenetic data
(Rebholz el 01., 1991).
...
JORDAN AI Harrah
AI
Khunfah
BAHRAIN
..
SAUDI ARABIA /
~ !5 (
\ ioATAR
• Medina@
•
.. Riyadh
.....
U,A,E,
Taif . .. . OMAN
leddah • Rub al Khali
..
.. ..
YEMEN
Figure 12,1 Shaded triangles represent locations where Saudi gazelle specimens have been sighted Or coll ected
(information from Thouless er at., 1991). The shaded area is where the founders of the capti ve population of
Saudi dorcas gazelle were captured (Faris AI-Timimi, pers. comm.).
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