Morphological Characterization of Lithognathus mormyrus(Linnaeus, 1758) Populations in the Southern Black Sea (Turkey)

Abstract

Morphologicalcharacteristicssuchasmeristiccountsandbodyshapehavelongbeenusedinstockidentification.Fiftystripedseabream,Lithognathusmormyrus,individualsweresampledfrom the south Black Sea between January 2020 and November 2020. Morphometric characteris-tics were given as the percentage of total length (TL%). Species identification and shape differenc-es between sexes of striped seabream were analyzed by different statistical methods. The biggest maximumlengthandweightvalues(TL=310mmforTW=399.73g)werefoundforthesouthernBlack Sea in this study. The mean TL of female individuals (X=205.26 mm) was found higher than male individuals (X=199.10 mm). The TL% ratio of head length was found as 24.45% for all individ-uals.Inthisstudy,isometricgrowth(t=2.009,p gt;0.05)wasdeterminedforallindividualsandthelength-weight relationship (LWR) was found as W=0.013TL3.003 (r²=0.983). This study revealed that the morphological characteristics of L. mormyrus differ significantly between female and male in-dividuals and the species may be a good example of sexual dimorphism.

Keywords

• black sea
• fish morphology
• lwr
• sparid
• striped seabream