Morphometric and meristic variation between stocks of Bluefish ( Pomatomus saltatrix) in the Black, Marmara, Aegean and northeastern Mediterranean Seas

Abstract

The genetic and morphological variation of Pomatomus saltatrix were studied based on morphometric and meristic analyses of samples collected throughout the Black Seas, Marmara, Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Seas. In discriminant function analysis, plotting first and second discriminant functions explained 61 and 77% of the between-group variation for morphometric and meristic analyses, respectively, and indicated existence of three morphologically differentiated groups of P. saltatrix. Consistent differences in the summer and winter samples of the eastern Black Sea, the adjacent sea populations of western Black Sea, Marmara Sea and Aegean Sea, which were overlapping and northeastern Mediterranean samples were observed. The detected pattern of morphological differentiation also reflects their geographic isolation. The overall random assignment of individuals into their original population was moderate for morphometric (54%) and meristic (64%) characters. Both for morphometric and meristic analysis, the highest reclassification rate was observed for the eastern Black Sea and northeastern Mediterranean Sea samples, the most clearly isolated groups. Examination of the contribution of each morphometric and meristic character to the first and second discriminant functions revealed that the observed differences were mainly from head measurements, body depth, lateral scale and vertebrate numbers, indicating these characters to be important in the description of population characteristics. Mantel's test showed that the Mahalanobis distance between the populations both for morphometric ( r = −0.282; P = 0.226) and meristic ( r = 0.632; P = 0.119) were not significantly associated with their geographical distances.