Abstract

Noble crayfish (Astacus astacus (Linnaeus, 1758)) is one of four native European crayfish species inhabiting Croatian freshwater habitats and it is protected by the Croatian law. It is naturally distributed in the continental part of Croatia in the Drava-Danube and Sava River basins, forming both river and lake populations and it also occurs in the Adriatic Sea basin, where its presence is of anthropogenic origin. The aim of this work was to investigate the relationship between morphometrics of A. astacus from different populations and some habitat parameters. For that purpose five noble crayfish populations were chosen; one from the Drava River basin, three from the Sava River basin and one from the Adriatic Sea basin. Altogether 1145 animals were analysed, weight and 9 morphometric characteristics per crayfish were measured. The following habitat parameters were taken into consideration: mean annual temperature of water, site altitude and the type of the water (still or running). We found statistically significant differences between morphometric characteristics of males and females, significant differences between morphological characteristics of different populations as well as statistically significant correlations between certain morphometric characteristics and habitat parameters.

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