engleski

Morphological differences in some Cobitis populations from Croatia

Four Cobitis populations from the Adriatic and the Black Sea drainage basins have been described. All phenotypic factures, in both the males and the females, indicate that these four populations are almost completely different from each other. In particulary the Adriatic populations differed also from the Linnaean type specimen obtained from Sweden. With all these different characteristics, the populations might not be subspecies as considered by Karaman (1929), but species C. narentana from the Neretva basin and C. dalmatina from the river Cetina. The existence of the two caudal fin base spots indicates the possibility that the Zrmanja population is in fact C. taenia bilineata Canestrini, 1865 from northern Italy and according to the description of the species C. taenia danubialis Bacescu, subsp. nov. (Nalbant l993), the Drava form is probably this subspecies. Further studies, especially genetic and biochemical, are necessary for confirmation of these results.

Adriatic drainage basin; Cobitis narentana; Cobitis dalmatina; morphometry; meristic characteristics; phenotype

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