Biometric Relationships of Villorita cyprinoides (Gray) from Vembanad Lake, Kerala, India

Abstract

Length-weight and other biometric relationships of the black clam Villorita cyprinoides collected from two stations of Vembanad Lake were compared in this study. In clams of both the stations, the growth in length was accompanied by increase in weight (b=1, isometric growth). The length-width (L-B) and length-height (L-H) relationships of V. cyprinoides from both the stations were positively allometric (b>1). All relationships involving weights of one part to weight of the other part (Total Weight (TW)-Meat Weight (MW), TW-Shell Weight (SW), SW-MW) showed negative allometry (b<1) for clams of station 1 and positive allometry for clams of station 2. The values of the correlation coefficients, r for various biometric relationships studied were very close to unity.