Can morphological characters be used to identify the pond-reared offspring of wild Chinese mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis, from different basins?

Abstract Although morphology is always used to distinguish wild Chinese mitten crab ( Eriocheir sinensis ) populations, whether morphology could be used to identify the pond-reared offspring of wild E. sinensis populations has remained unclear. This study was undertaken to examine the morphological difference of wild E. sinensis (G0) from the Yangtze River (YR), Huang River (HR) and Liao River (LR) as well as their pond-reared offspring (G1). The results showed that: (1) The amount of significantly different parameters of three G1 populations was evidently less than that of three G0 populations; (2) G0 and G1 individuals of each population were clearly separated by principal component analysis, furthermore, three G0 populations were clearly separated while three G1 populations were not well distinguished from each other; (3) discrimination accuracy of G1 individuals in stepwise discriminant analysis was obviously lower than that of G1 populations; (4) G0 and G1 populations were clustered into two separate clusters in the cluster analysis. In conclusion, morphological differences between wild E. sinensis populations had disappeared after one generation of artificial culture, and morphology thus probably cannot be used to distinguish the pond-reared offspring originated from three wild E. sinensis populations.