Morphological Variations and Discriminant Analysis of Different Populations of Meretrix meretrix in Four Sea Regions in China

Based on nine morphological characters of populations of Meretrix meretrix from Liaoning,Shandong,Jiangsu,Fujian and Guangxi,by means of multivariate morphometrics,their morphological variations of the seven different populations were studied.The results of cluster analysis and principal component analysis revealed that the morphological characters of Meretrix meretrix from Shandong Weifang population and Shandong Rizhao population were similar and much more different from Guangdong Zhanjiang population.In the principal component analysis,three principal component were constructed,the contributory ratio of the three principal components were 31.50 %,20.27 % and 13.35 % respectively,and the cumulative contributory ratio was 65.12 %.The result of discriminant analysis revealed that there were significant differences among the seven populations(P0.01).The discriminant functions of seven populations were established,and the discriminant accuracy was 50.00 %～96.67 %(P1) and 60.00 %～96.43 %(P2).The total discriminant accuracywas 77.14 %.