Morphometric character variation of the blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus Linnaeus, 1758) population in western and eastern part of Java Sea

Abstract

The blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus Linnaeus, 1758) inhabits coastal waters with sandy or muddy substrates of Southeast Asia. Aquatic environment and fishing intensity might influence the variation in morphometric characters of species as a form of adaptation and might characterize the stock unit as well. This study was aimed to analyze the morphometric variation of the blue swimming crab (BSC) population in western and eastern parts of Java Sea as part of Fisheries Management Area (FMA 712) of Indonesia. The representative crab sample for both males and females were taken randomly from three different locations, i.e. East Lampung, Rembang, and Southern Madura Island. Those samples were analyzed with a method called “conventional morphometric method”. Result of the Kruskal-Wallis test showed that 10 characters were significantly different between male and female crabs. The cluster analysis also showed that the crabs in East Lampung and Rembang had high similarities which tended to be close population, while Southern Madura’s crabs were seemed to be dissimilar. In addition, discriminant analyses also showed that the BSC population in Southern Madura was different from the other two populations, indicating that the BSC population of Southern Madura is a different stock unit.

Morphometric Study of Swimming Crab (Portunus pelagicus) Using Truss Network Analysis for Determination of Stock Structure in FMA 711

“…Population groupings can be affected by similar aquatic environmental conditions between locations [20] and proximity of geographic locations [21] or the sameness of environmental quality between locations [22]. Environmental quality is the main limiting factor cause of morphological characters' diversity at the intra-species level [23].…”

Identifying blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus) stocks with truss network analysis approach in Indonesian Fisheries Management Area 712

“…Zimmerman et al (2011) and Hepp et al (2012) explain that adaptations frequently encompass changes in morphology, such as in the size and shape of the carapace or cheliped or in individual condition. Zairion et al (2020) explain that BSC was able to adapt in habitats with variation environmental parameters. It's indicated that BSC was able to live in a high variation of environment, such as in dry season even in low proportion (Supadminingsih et al, 2019).…”

“…Differences in environmental conditions are thought to have a significant effect on differences in BSC morphometrics in FMA 712. The environmental condition influences the differences in morphometric characters and could affect the growth rate of a particular body part (Zairion et al, 2020). Changes in morphological characters become a form of adjustment for each organism to its environment (Pramithasari et al, 2017).…”

“…Based on the Euclidean distance, the higher the level of population similarity of organisms within the group will be higher. Things that cause grouping among populations include proximity of geographical locations (Abinawanto et al, 2018) and similar environmental conditions among locations (Solomon et al, 2015;Abinawanto et al, 2018;Zairion et al, 2020). The environmental conditions that might play important role for blue swimming crab are temperature, light intensity, and photoperiod vary seasonally among locations where the crab lives (Hamid et al, 2016b).…”

“…In general, order Decapoda has become a lot of research objects in Indonesia, including blue swimming crab Zairion et al, 2015aZairion et al, , 2015bHamid et al, 2016a;Kembaren et al, 2018;Zairion et al, 2020) because of its high economic value (Prabawa et al, 2014;Jayawiguna et al, 2017). Distribution areas of these species are along northern Java and east Lampung.…”