Morphometric analysis of some populations of lymnocardiid species (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from Razelm Lake Complex (Romania)

In this paper we report the morphometric analysis of some populations of Lymnocardiid species from the lakes Razelm and Golovi a. We used three measurements ratios to perform a discriminant analysis and a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), in order to compare the species Hypanis colorata vs. Hypanis angusticostata in the two lakes, H. colorata in Razelm vs. Golovi a, and H. angusticostata in Razelm vs. Golovi a. From this analysis we concluded that the multivariate means of the morphological variables used in this study were highly significantly different (p=3.2e-05) between the two species. Concerning the geographical variability, in both species, the analysis showed no significant difference between the populations in the two investigated lakes. We also determined from a fitting curve analysis, that the growth pattern of both species shows length-height isometry and width-length and width-height negative allometry.