Journal of Aquaculture Research & Development

Abstract

Stock Identification of Critically Endangered Olive Barb, Puntius sarana (Hamilton, 1822) with Emphasis on Management Implications

Siddik M, Chaklader M, Hanif M, Islam M, Sharker M and Rahman M

The study was carried out to investigate the stock identification of the olive barb, Puntius sarana (Hamilton, 1822) through morphometric characters. A total of 110 sample ranging from 10.00-16.80 cm in total length (LT) and 13.94-63.46 g in body weight (BW) were examined to assess the morphometric variation of Puntius sarana from four mighty rivers; the Padma, Meghna, Jamuna and the Halda in Bangladesh. The univariate result showed significantly variation (p<0.05) in seven morphometric characters out of 23 characters among the populations. The discriminant analysis revealed a morphological segregation among the studied populations based on the characters of length of anal base (YZ) and pre-dorsal length (LM). Discriminant function analysis (DFA) showed 55.0% of the individuals were correctly classified into the four regions on the basis of morphological characters. The first principal component (PC I) analysis elucidated 51.56% of total variation whereas PC II and PC III were 10.72% and 8.28%, respectively. The dendrogram was drawn by using morphometric data showed that the Meghna and Halda population make one cluster and the Jamuna and the Padma population form another cluster and the distance between the Padma and Meghna river population were the highest. The canonical graph also revealed all population of the Meghna and Halda were highly overlapped compare to others. The results of the present study would help monitoring the species status in Bangladesh as a bid to take appropriate management measures for its wide geographical distribution.