Morphometric Comparison of Two populations of Waspi Cabdio morar (Hamilton, 1822) from The Mokran and Mashkil Basins – Sistan and Baluchestan Province

Abstract

The morphometric comparison of Waspi fish, Cabdio morar based on 19 morphometric traits were done on 40 and 63 specimens, respectively from Maskil and Sarbaz rivers, Sistan and Baluchistan province. Fish samples were caught using electrofishing in July 2013. Fish were fixed in 4% formaldehyde after anesthetizing in 1 ppt clue oil extract and transported to laboratory. The fish were photographed and the morphological traits were measured using ImageJ software. The PCA and DFA where used to morphological analysis after removing size effect from row data. The results showed that the traits body depth, head length, snout length, orbital diameter, post-orbital length, pre-dorsal length, pre-anal length, pre-ventral length, dorsal fin base length and anal fin base length in Mashkid specimens were higher than those of Sarbaz river specimens (p<0.01). The ecological factors including micro habitat conditions like water current, presence of aggregated aquatic vegetables and the quality and quantity of feed in their environment are the main causes of morphometric differences between the two Waspi populations.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• cyprinidae
• waspi fish
• inland water fishes of iran
• ichthyology