Development of a key using morphological characters to distinguish south‐western Indian Ocean anguillid glass eels

Abstract

Two morphological characters were examined in 4099 anguillid glass eels sampled in four south-western Indian Ocean islands, and resulting identifications were tested using genetic analysis. Distance between the origin of the dorsal and anal fins as related to total length and tail and caudal fin pigmentation enabled formulation of a useful field identification key, which was able to discriminate 4036 glass eels of the regional species Anguilla bicolor bicolor, Anguilla marmorata and Anguilla mossambica, and excluded the occurrence of Anguilla nebulosa labiata in the sample.