  It is well-known that staggered fermions do not necessarily satisfy the same
global symmetries as the continuum theory. We analyze the mechanism behind this
phenomenon for arbitrary dimension and gauge group representation. For this
purpose we vary the number of lattice sites between even and odd parity in each
single direction. Since the global symmetries are manifest in the lowest
eigenvalues of the Dirac operator, the spectral statistics and also the
symmetry breaking pattern will be affected. We analyze these effects and
compare our predictions with Monte-Carlo simulations of naive Dirac operators
in the strong coupling limit.
