morphological diversity of garra rufa (heckel, 1843) populations in iran

in this study 485 specimen of garra rufa (heckel, 1843) from 29 populations from six river systems and basins including tigris, karkheh, karun, persis (helleh and mond), hormuz and maharlu were collected by a 5mm mesh sized seine net, anesthetized in 1% clove oil solution, fixed in 10% formalin and transferred to the laboratory for further investigations. some 28 morphometric, 25 morphometric proportion and 10 meristic traits were examined. different mean comparison methods, parametric and non-parametric analyses were used for statistical analyses. in comparison of the six aforementioned basins, for the proportions, kruskal-wallis non-parametric test and analysis of variance (anova) for all the other traits, but the ratios of dorsal fin base/sl and pectoral fin/sl, showed significant differences (p<0.05). amongst the meristic traits, except the number of vertebrae, caudal fin rays and pharyngeal teeth, all other traits were significantly different. based on the compared data, none of the populations could be distinguished from each other.