Geometric Morphometric Comparison of Barilius mesopotamicus (Berg 1932) Populations in Diala and Tigris River Basins

The present study compared the geometric morphometrics of Barilius mesopotamicus populations in Diala and Tigris river basins in Iran. For this purpose, 99 fish specimens were sampled from Meymeh, Changooleh, Kangir and Doyrej rivers. Pictures were taken from the left side of the specimens and digitized using 15 landmarks placed on two-dimensional images using Tpsdig2 software. The data after Procrast analysis were analyzed with PCA, CVA multivariate statistical methods and cluster analysis. Geometric morphometric comparisons PCA and CVA tests and classification of the population and patterns of the body shape along the axes, showed some differences which were due to differences in head size and shape, body height and length of the caudal peduncle. Although the PCA and CVA tests did not fully differentiate the populations, Kangir was shown as a separate group.