Morphological variability of the forms/species of the whitefish Coregonus lavaretus sensu lato (Salmonidae: Coregoninae) in the water bodies of Northwestern Russia

The study of the whitefish Coregonus lavaretus (Linnaeus, 1758) sensu lato by multivariate analysis of 32 plastic features has shown that the list of features that can be used for differentiating populations varying in ecological specialization from Northwestern Russia's water bodies is short. The European whitefish forms/species, similar to those from the Siberian water bodies studied earlier, are distributed along the axis of the first principal component, based on the maximum body height (H). The morphogroups of whitefish from Northwestern Russia's water bodies, identified by their variability in body height (H) and the height (h) and length of the caudal peduncle (pA), are not completely identical to the analogous morphogroups from Siberian water bodies: the body shape of some whitefish populations from Eastern Europe is similar to that of some Arctic Siberian forms/species, but the similarity of European whitefish populations to the South Siberian whitefish fauna is less clear. Possible reasons for the non-coincidence of morphological features in the Siberian and European whitefish faunas, associated with several waves of migration from Siberia, are discussed with an emphasis on the recurrent genesis of European populations.