A comparative study was conducted to determine the DNA 'fingerprints' of P.m.tibetanus and P.m.artatus by employing the oligonucleotide probe LZF-I technique.The important findings are as follows: (1) Identical bands were detected at the 2.3 kb in all of the randomly selected individuals of P.m.tibetanus,and at the 4.8 kb of the P.m.artatus samples.This difference in the alleles could be one of the important genetic markers used to classify the two subspecies. (2) The average bands were 14.65 in P.m.tibetanus, and 19.30 in P.m.artatus.The similarity coefficients among the individuals of P.m.tibetanus and P.m.artatsu were 0.18 and 0.13,respectively.The similarity coefficient between the subspecies was 0.09.These results indicated that the individuals of P.m.artatus had greater genetic variation than those of P.m.tibetanus,and the variations between the two subspecies were greater than between the individuals of each subspecies. (3) The probability of the LZF-I probe in identifying the genetic variation among the individuals of P.m.tibetanus was 2.04×10^-12 ,while that was 9.8×^-17among the individuals of P.m.artatus,suggesting that there existed specificity of fingerprints among all the individuals of the two subspeciesP,and that the polymorphism of the genomic DNA in .m.artatus was greater than that in P.m.tibetanus.

         The results reported in this paper are of importance in studying the genetic diversity and systematic position of the two species.