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Narrowed-clawed crayfish (Astacus leptodactylus) is one of four native European freshwater crayfish inhabiting Croatian waters. Its presence was for the first time officially recorded relatively recently in the Sava River. Since then it was discovered in several rivers belonging to the Sava River basin, and in some rivers in the Drava-Danube basin. At the same time it was possible to get narrowed-clawed crayfish, imported from Armenia. Their appearance was different from Croatian A. leptodactylus, therefore a comparative analyses of morphological characteristics were applied. Altogether 153 animals were analysed (131 from 5 Croatian populations and 22 from Armenia), and 23 morphometrical characteristics (from which 6 were bilateral) and 4 bilateral meristic characteristics per crayfish were measured. Additionally, 2 meristic characteristics per each sex were recorded. As expected, we found statistically significant differences between males and females in morphometrical characteristics of claws and abdomen, which are known to grow allometrically after sexual maturity is reached. The results of ANOVA have shown that narrowed-clawed crayfish originating from different populations differ significantly in recorded morphometric and meristic characteristics, both between Croatian and between Croatian and Armenian populations. Multivariate discriminant analysis was applied to identify morphometric and meristic characteristics that best separate groups of A. leptodactylus and the results are discussed in details. Phylogenetic tree, accomplished on the basis of mitochondrial 16S and COI genes sequences, confirmed results obtained by morphological analyses. |
