Table 10. The first- and second-best ratios retrieved from the LDA ratio extractor of either head or body characters (see Table 1) alone or combined, used for pair-wise comparisons of all contemporary specimens from the six whitefish species of Lake Thun. For some comparisons only a subset of characters could be used (a-d); the respective characters that were excluded are listed at the end of the table. Only external characters were used for the LDA comparisons, since internal characters (gill raker and gill arch length) cannot be measured on live specimens, and are thus not informative to assign specimens to species in the field. Additionally, species were combined to find first- and second-best ratios that distinguish one species or a combination of species vs. all other species. For multi-species comparisons, only the comparisons that yielded distinguishing ratios are shown. δ is a measure of how good shape discriminates in comparison to size (i.e., the smaller δ the less allometry). Ratios marked with an asterisk * have very little (for the pairwise species comparisons not more than one specimen of one species overlaps with the other species) or no overlap and were thus eligible for use in the species key and the diagnoses.

(a) PelvFS, PecF1, DFAd, DFAe, DFPe, TL, SL, EH, SD, SW, INW, IOW (b) PelvFS, PecF1, DFAd, TL (c) PelvFS, PecF1, DFAd, TL,EH (d) PelvFS, PecF1, DFAd, TL, EH, ES, EC