Study on population structure of Arabian yellowfin seabream (Acanthopagrus arabicus) in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea

Abstract

This study investigated the present species of Sparidae family in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. Population structure of dominant and significant species of the genus” Acanthopagrus” was examined through morphometric and meristic characteristics from June 2014 to May 2016. Sparidae samples were collected from 5 area of Khuzestan, Bushehr, West and East Strait of Hormuz, and Sistan & Baluchistan in the Persian Gulf & Oman Sea. Totally, 54 characteristics comprising 41 morphometric and 13 meristic characteristics were measured in each species and 9 species from Sparidae family including Acanthopagrus arabicus, Acanthopagrus bifasciatus ، Acanthopagrus berda , Argirops spinifer، Crenidense crenidens، Diplodus sargus kotschyi ، Sparidentex hasta Rhabdosargus sarba and Rhabdosargus haffara, were identified. The result of the investigation on the family structure of Acanthopagrus arabicus species was carried out by Dunkan test on standard length, analysis on classification of morphometric and meristic characteristics, decomposition test to main component of PCA, discriminant function analysis (DFA) and the Cluster test on morphometric and meristic characteristics showed that the studied samples in 5 areas have considerable differences (P<0.05). This result indicated the relatively high phenotypic diversity existence in A. arabicus species in 5 studied area. In average, the percentage of the numbers that were located properly in their original population for morphometric and numbering characteristics were 85.3 and 48.3 respectively. According to the mentioned assessments, it was concluded that morphometric characteristics indicated more classification power than meristic characteristics in the collected samples of 5 areas.