فهرست مطالب masoomeh saravani

In the present study, for the morphological comparison of Glyptothorax galaxias populations, 54 samples were caught from the four stations of Afsarabad, Armand, Bazoft and Beheshtabad from the headwaters of the Karun watershed. The geometric morphometric analysis was done based on 15, 13 and 10 homologous morphological landmarks on lateral, ventral and dorsal. Landmark method determined the out shape body and related analysis such as PCA, CVA, DFA, and dendogram was performed to show if there were differences among population of Glyptothorax galaxias. The results showed that the population living in Armand branch is separate from other populations, Bazoft and BeheshtAbad populations have the least distance and are placed in the same cluster, and Behesht-Abad and Afsarabad populations overlap with each other to some extent. It seems that the difference between different habitats in terms of flow intensity, river slope, nutritional conditions and water physics and chemistry is the reason for the difference in populations, which should be investigated in future studies. Considering that the species G. galaxias is native to the drainage basin of the Persian Gulf of Iran and the studies conducted on this species are very few and limited. Therefore, a comprehensive study of this species from different morphological aspects is necessary.

  In the present study, the morphological variation in seven catfish species of the genus Glyptothorax in the inland waters of Iran was studied using traditional and geometric morphometric methods.

For this purpose, 182 specimens including 32 G. alidaeii, from the Seimare in the Karkheh drainage, 54 G. galaxies, from the upper Karun drainage, 12 G. hosseinpanahi, from the Zohreh drainage, 16 G. shaperi, from Shapur in the Helleh drainage, 30 G. silviae, from the Jarrahi drainage, 26 Glyptothorax sp. from the Gamasiab drainage, 12 G. pallens, from the Sirvan drainage, totally from 12 sampling sites in inland waters of Iran were analyzed. The sampling was done using electrofishing during 2009-2021. Morphological traits were measured. The geometric morphometric comparison based on 15, 13, and 10 landmark indicators respectively from lateral view with 106, ventral 79, and dorsal 46 distance between these points were digitized and analyzed. The landmark method was used to determine the general body shape of the populations and related analyzes including DFA, CVA, PCA, and hierarchical dendrogram were performed to determine the differences between the Glyptothorax populations

The PCA results of the studied Glyptothorax showed that in lateral, dorsal, and ventral views, 37.375%, 51.164%, and 38.228% of body shape changes are related to two main components, respectively. The traits that had the greatest impact on the separation of the studied species were related to the position of the snout, body length, body depth, head depth, and caudal peduncle length. In addition to the previously reported differences, this morphological-analysis showed a significant interspecific morphological diversity among the studied Glyptothorax.

The obtained results showed a well separation between the studied Glyptothorax species, also suggest the Glyptothorax sp. Population from Gamasiab River as undescribed species, which needs further molecular studies to confirm.