Geographic variation of Moenkhausia bonita (Characiformes: Characidae) in the rio de la Plata basin, with distributional comments on M. intermedia

Moenkhausia bonita occurs in numerous additional localities from the Bermejo, Paraná, Paraguay, and Uruguay river basins. Given that this finding greatly expands the distributional range of M. bonita, we carried out an intraspecific comparison, using multivariate methods for 18 morphometric and eigh...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Vanegas Ríos, James Anyelo, Britzke, Ricardo, Mirande, Juan Marcos
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:Argentina
Institución:Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Repositorio:SEDICI (UNLP)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/122324
Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/122324
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Zoología
Allometry
Argentina
Moenkhausia
Morphological variation
Widespread species
Alometría
Variación morfológica
Especie ampliamente distribuida
Descripción
Sumario:Moenkhausia bonita occurs in numerous additional localities from the Bermejo, Paraná, Paraguay, and Uruguay river basins. Given that this finding greatly expands the distributional range of M. bonita, we carried out an intraspecific comparison, using multivariate methods for 18 morphometric and eight meristic characters taken from a comprehensive sample of 536 specimens. All localities were distributed in four major geographic groups as follows: Bermejo, Paraná, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Results of the morphometric comparisons showed significant differences among the studied groups except between the Paraguay and Uruguay groups. Statistical differences in meristic values were found for most between-group comparisons, especially in those resulting from discriminant canonical analyses (DCA). Specimens from the Bermejo basin were the most distinct group in most morphological comparisons. However, the overall subtle differences found in body morphology likely reflect intraspecific variation within M. bonita and seem to be mainly influenced by spatial and environmental features of drainages. As M. bonita was previously identified as M. intermedia in the río de La Plata basin, distributional comments on the latter species in that basin are provided.