The goitered gazelle inhabits sands and gravel plains andlimestone plateau.Large herds were also present in the Near East. Some 6,000 years ago, they were captured and killed with the help ofdesert kites.[2] Rock art found in Jordan suggests that it wasslaughtered ritually.[3]
Its mating behaviour ispolygynous and usually occurs in the early winter.[4]It runs at high speed, without the leaping, bounding gait seen in other gazelle species. Throughout much of its range, the goitered gazellemigrates seasonally.[1] Herds cover 10–30 km (6.2–18.6 mi) per day in the winter, with these distances being reduced to about 1–3 km (0.62–1.86 mi) in summer.
Several subspecies have been described, and four forms are distinguished, which used to be treated as separatemonotypic species.[5]Gazella marica was traditionally recognised as a subspecies, but has been identified as a species in 2011.[6][1]
Persian gazelle (Gazella (subgutturosa) subgutturosa) - southeastern Turkey, Azerbaijan,Georgia, Syria, northern and eastern Iraq, Iran, southern Afghanistan, western Pakistan
Turkmen gazelle (Gazella (subgutturosa) gracilicornis) -Kazakhstan (Buzachi) in the east to aboutLake Balkash, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan
Yarkand gazelle (Gazella (subgutturosa) yarkandensis) - northern and northwestern China (Xinjiang,Qinghai,Shaanxi,Gansu,Nei Monggol), Mongolia; includes subspecieshilleriana.
TheArabian sand gazelle (Gazella marica)[1] occurs in Saudi Arabia, southern Syria, southwestern Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Oman, offshorePersian Gulf islands.
Until recently, goitered gazelles were considered to represent a single, albeit polymorphic, species. However, recent genetic studies show one of the subspecies,G. s. marica, isparaphyletic in respect to the other populations of goitered gazelles,[6][7]
^Murtskhvaladze, M.; Gurielidze, Z.; Kopaliani, N. & Tarkhnishvili, D. (2012). "Gene introgression betweenGazella subguturrosa andG. marica: limitations of maternal inheritance analysis for species identification with conservation purposes".Acta Theriologica.12 (4):827–831.doi:10.1007/s13364-012-0079-8.S2CID17324903.
.jpg)
