engleski

Morphological characteristics of stone crayfish from „ Žumberak-Samoborsko gorje“ Nature Park

The stone crayfish mainly inhabits headwater sections of small fast running brooks, and it has the smallest distribution area of all of the native European freshwater crayfish species. In Croatia it is distributed in the water bodies belonging to the Black Sea drainage, but also some populations in the Adriatic Sea drainage have been recorded. As A. torrentium is the smallest of all of the species from family Astacidae, and their small size makes them unsuitable for intensive commercial exploitation they have not been frequently studied. For our research we have chosen 4 populations inhabiting small streams within “ Žumberak-Samoborsko gorje” Nature Park situated in the mountain region on the western border of Croatia, close to the town of Zagreb. Previous molecular-phylogenetic research (16S and COI genes) revealed 4 genetically distinctive haplo-groups within this region. So the aim of this research was to thoroughly study morphological characteristics of stone crayfish belonging to those four different haplo-groups, intending to verify if there are some morphological characters that support the results of molecular research, and that clearly separate stone crayfish into distinct groups. Analyse of variance (ANOVA, Bonferroni post-hoc test) has shown that statistically significant differences in recorded morphological (21 characters) and meristic (2 characters) characteristics between studied populations, for both males and females, exist. Multivariate discriminant analyses of measured characteristics revealed characteristics that clearly separate populations. For males those were rostrum length and claw finger length, and for females those were carapace width, lateral curvature of crapace and areolar width. Percentage of correctly classified crayfish per population was 100% for both males and females.

morphology; stone crayfish; Croatia

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