Morphological divergence of lake and stream Phoxinus of Northern Italy and the Danube basin based on geometric morphometric analysis.

ABSTRACT: Minnows of the genus Phoxinus are promising candidates to investigate adaptive divergence, as they inhabit both still and running waters of a variety of altitudes and climatic zones in Europe. We used landmark-based geometric morphometric methods to quantify the level of morphological variability in Phoxinus populations from streams and lakes of Northern Italy and the Danube basin. We analyzed body shape differences of populations in the dorsal, lateral, and ventral planes, using a large array of landmarks and semilandmarks. As the species identification of Phoxinus on morphological characters is ambiguous, we used two mitochondrial genes to determine the genetic background of the samples and to ensure we are comparing homogenous groups. We have found significant body

SUBMITTER: Ramler D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5243779 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature