Analysis of Body Color Variations Among Four Wild Populations of Portunus trituberculatus

Abstract:

Portunus triuberbuculatus is an important economical species in China with fast development in the past decades. In recent years, the wild stocks of P. triuberbuculatus along the coast of China have suffered from the overfishing and environmental pollution. To investigate effects of the body color diversity of P. triuberbuculatus in resource conservation, 50 individuals were collected in March 2007 from four wild geographic populations distributed in the Yalujiang Estuary, Laizhou Gulf, Zhoushan, and Haizhou Gulf. Families were established by group hybridization. Discriminant analysis and One-Way ANOVA analysis were adopted during the analytical process. Cluster analysis and discriminant analysis were conducted on spots characters of P. trituberculatus from four populations. The results indicated that the total accuracy rate of discriminant on female crabs from four gulfs was 53.3%. The lowest accuracy rate of discriminant of 30.0% was observed in Laizhou Gulf population and the highest of 83.3% was in Haizhou gulf population. Results showed that carapace color and spots were significantly different among four populations. There was a tendency for the association between less carapace color and spots with the decrease in culturing in the same environment at four populations. These results supported that body color of P. triuberbuculatus is decided mainly by environment, and that genetic also is an impact factor.