Morphological diversity and differentiation of Asian populations of pink salmon Oncorhynchus gorbuscha (Walbaum) of even generations

Abstract

A morphological study of three Asian populations of pink salmon of the Ola, Bolshaya and Zhupanov rivers of adjacent even generations was carried out. For a quantitative description of the external appearance of pink salmon, a scheme of 17 measurements proposed by M.K. Glubokovsky [3] was used. On average, lower values of morphological diversity are characteristic of head measurements and fin heights, while indicators of body length and height have high indicators of morphological diversity. The hierarchical method of decomposition of morphological diversity makes it possible to find out the proportions of intrapopulation and interpopulation variability included in the total value of morphological diversity of each measurement. For females, the shares of morphological diversity averaged over all dimensions are as follows: sample — 48%, intra-annual — 19% and interpopulation — 33% share In males sample — 47%, intra-annual — 17% and interpopulation — 36% share. Thus, almost half of the total value of morphological diversity is determined by differences in morphological measurements between individuals within the sample, interpopulation differences make up one third of the total value, and the interannual share in the indicator of morphological differences is quite small. The rather high interpopulation proportion of morphological diversity indicates the possibility of using morphological measurements to distinguish populations from different parts of the range.