Usefulness of Meristic and Morphometric Characters in Discriminating Populations of American Shad (Alosa sapidissima) (Ostreichthyes:Clupeidae) Inhabiting a Marine Environment

Abstract

American shad (Alosa sapidissima) concentrate each summer in the basins of the inner Bay of Fundy during their coastal migration. Tag returns from 6124 marked shad indicated that these fish return to every important shad spawning stream on the Atlantic coast. Ten meristic and 16 morphometric characters of shad collected from 14 rivers (range: Florida to Quebec) were used to develop linear discriminant functions (LDF). Variables which differed significantly (p < 0.05) between the sexes, year of sampling, and the time of collection during the spawning run were removed prior to LDF classification. The highest mean percent correct classification was achieved by the allocation of fish into regional groups, after classification into individual rivers, using pooled meristic and morphometric variables: 87.2% for males and 82.4% for females. The functions were then used to assign shad from a mixed populations (Cumberland Basin) to individual rivers and regions. Of these, 10.9% were assigned to rivers south of Cape Lookout, North Carolina, 38.1% to rivers between Cape Lookout and Cape Cod, 32.5% into rivers of the Bay of Fundy, and 18.5% into rivers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In-river tag returns were compared with LDF classification and were found to be similar.

Continental-scale variation in otolith geochemistry of juvenile American shad (Alosa sapidissima)

“…Early efforts focused on natural variability in meristic and morphometric characters among rivers (e.g., Warfel and Olsen 1947;Carscadden and Leggett 1975;Melvin et al 1992). Mitochondrial and microsatellite DNA polymorphisms showed subtle but significant variation among fish from groups of rivers throughout the range of the species (Epifanio et al 1995;Waters et al 2000;Nolan et al 2003), and mtDNA polymorphisms have been used to examine the stock structure of oceanic harvests of American shad (Brown et al 1999).…”

Morphological differentiation among species of the genus Mugil Linnaeus, 1758 (Mugilidae) from Côte d’Ivoire

“…Of all identification methods available (e.g., Ihssen et al, 1981;Templeman, 1983;Smith and Jamieson, 1986), the analysis of morphologic and morphometric characters is one of the most commonly used (e.g., Taylor and McPhail, 1985;Melvin et al, 1992;Hurlbut and Clay, 1998;Britz and Ferraris, 2003;Heok, 2003;Smith and Karmovskaya, 2003;Kamilari and Sfenthourakis, 2009;Yokoo et al, 2009). In the same way, meristic characters have been widely used in studies of fish populations and species (e.g., Kaya et al, 1998;Turan et al, 2011).…”

Population Structure of Denison?s barb, Puntius denisonii (Pisces:Cyprinidae): A Species Complex Endemic to the Western Ghats of India

“…Therefore, molecular markers alone may not be sufficient to detect existing genetic variation among populations, and also only a small proportion of DNA is analyzed by molecular markers. Morphometric and meristic characters have been commonly used in fisheries biology, as powerful phenotypic tool for measuring discreteness and relationships among various taxonomic categories [25][26][27][28]. However, phenotypic markers may detect morphological differentiation due to environmental differences in the habitats of partially-isolated stocks, which may be a practical level of partitioning among self-recruiting stocks.…”