Morphometric variation among three different geographical populations of the predominant white grub species, Holotrichia serrata (F.) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) was studied through multivariate analyses. The univariate one factor ANOVA analysis has yielded 21 and 19 significant characters of male and female, respectively, which were further subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for identifying the most significant characters that explains the intraspecific morphometric variation. The first two principal components PC1 and PC2 accounted for 43.65% variation in males and characters such as length of tarsal segments especially second (TR2_L), third (TR3_L), and fourth (TR4_L), followed by male genitalia characters, width of phallobase (PH_W) and width of paramere (PA_W), total body length (TB_L), length of antennal pedicel (AP_L), length of elytra (EL_L) were found to be the significant traits contributing to the variation in the three populations of male H. serrata. In case of females, the first two principal components accounted for 46.40% and characters such as length of antennal scape (AS_L), antennal pedicel (AP_L), width of clypeus (CL_W), length of hind inner tibial spur (ITS_L) and outer tibial spur (OTS_L) were the significant characters among the female populations of H. serrata. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and cross-validation of discriminant function analysis (DFA) also confirmed that three populations are distinct and morphometrically significant for the selected characters. Sexual dimorphism for maximum characters was observed in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka populations. Our study aids in identification of morphological features that attributes to the intraspecific variation among the different geographical population of Holotrichia serrata in the light of speciation.

通过多变量分析研究了主要白蛴螬物种锯齿黑鳃金龟（F.）（鞘翅目：金龟子科）三个不同地理种群之间的形态变异。单变量单因素方差分析已分别得出雄性和雌性的 21 个和 19 个显着性状，并进一步进行主成分分析 (PCA)，以确定解释种内形态变异的最显着性状。前两个主要成分 PC1 和 PC2 占男性和性状的 43.65% 变异，例如跗节长度，特别是第二 (TR2 _L )、第三 (TR3 _L ) 和第四 (TR4 _L )，其次是男性生殖器特征、宽度阳茎基部(PH _W )、节肢宽度(PA _W )、体长(TB _L )、触角花梗长度(AP _L )、鞘翅长度(EL _L )是导致变异的显着性状。在雄性H. serrata的三个种群中。就雌性而言，前两个主成分占46.40%，主要特征包括触角花长度(AS _L )、触角花梗(AP _L )、唇唇宽度(CL _W )、后胫骨内刺长度(ITS _L ) 和胫骨外刺 (OTS _L ) 是锯缘齿蛇雌性群体中的显着特征。多变量方差分析 (MANOVA) 和判别函数分析 (DFA) 的交叉验证也证实，对于所选性状而言，三个群体是不同的且在形态上显着。在安得拉邦和卡纳塔克邦种群中观察到最大性状的性别二态性。我们的研究有助于根据物种形成来识别锯缘黑鳃金龟不同地理种群之间种内变异的形态特征。