Morphological comparsion of Kura babel (Barbus cyri, Heckel 1834) in up and downstream of the Sangban dam

Taleghan River is important river of the Sefid River basin that encountered various antropological effects such as damming due to development of human communitis. Hence, its fish species are excelent cases to study the impact of these effects. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the morphological differences of Kura barbel (B. cyri) populations inhabiting up and downstream of the Sangban Dam (Taleghan River) using geometric and traditional morphometric methods by comparing the power of these methods to reveal their morphological differences. The results showed that geometric morphometric is an accurate and powerfull tool to discriminate close populations in terms of morphological charactrestics compared to traditional one. Whereas traditional technique is limited to measure distances and merely the ratios is able to show differences between populations. Therefore, up and downstream populations did not discriminate using traditional method, but geometric method could significantly discrimintat them in terms of morphological traits (P<0/005). The results also showed that the Sangban Dam has been caused differences in the morpgological features including body depth, head length and caudal peduncle depth of up and downstream populations of Kura barbel