Phenotypic Plasticity and Allometry of Craniological Characters of Anadromous and Lacustrine Forms of Whitefish Coregonus lavaretus (Linnaeus, 1758) as an Indication of the Wrong Species Status of Coregonus pidschian

Abstract

The variability of craniological characters has been studied for anadromous and lacustrine forms of whitefish Coregonus lavaretus (Linnaeus, 1758) from waterbodies of the Karelian coast of the White Sea. The significant phenotypic plasticity of craniological characters of the whitefish depends on the environmental conditions. Moreover, there is a correlation between indexes of the craniological traits (except for the index of the snout length) and the body and/or head length (allometric effect). These results suggest that it is unreasonable to separate anadromous and lacustrine forms of C. lavaretus as distinct taxonomical units and argues for the invalidity of C. pidschian and C. oxyrinchus species.