Taxonomy of Spirlins (Alburnoides ‎spp.) in Iran

So far, 13 species were recently recognized in the Iranian basins. In the present study the variation among A. eichwaldii, A. namaki, A. idignensis, and A. nicolausi, A. qanati A. petrubanarescui has been investigated from morphological and molecular approaches. To study the morphological characteristic, 144 specimens of these six species were used, on which 22 morphometrics were measured. Nine meristics characteristics were counted. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), discriminant analysis, and principal component analysis was performed. In the molecular studies, sequences of the mitochondrial gene, cytochrome b from six species were sequenced and analyzed. The morphological results of the data showed a high similarity among species, but could separate A. nicolausi and A. idignensis according to the PC1. Also A. idignensis and A. petrubanarescui are more similar based on the PC2. Moreover, based on meristic characteristics which were relatively similar, again A. nicolausi and A. idignensis could be separated by the first component. The phylogenetic analysis using Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Maximum-Parsimony (MP) methods supported the monophyletic status of the six species, suggesting their status as different species. The results of the molecular analysis showed that A. eichwaldii and A. petrubanarescui have the most similarity (about 99%) and the A. idignensis has the maximum difference (about 85%) with the other species. These results justify the results of morphometric analysis.