The morphometry of fish scales collected from New Zealand and Turkey

ABSTRACT This study examines the shape of scales from eleven fish species belonging to four fish families to infer whether the family, species and the geographic origin of fishes could be determined using scale shape. Site differentiation was analyzed only for the Cyprinidae since from the five species of this family three occurred in New Zealand and two in Turkey. Morphometric analysis was used because it allows standard multivariate analyses while preserving information about scale shape. Generalized Procrustes Analysis was used to analyse the data on scale shape. Principal components scores were submitted to canonical discriminant analysis to determine the efficacy of discrimination by families, species and geographic variants. The significance of classifications was assessed by MANOVA. MANOVA showed differences in the scale shape for the geographic location as well as by families and species. Families, species and geographic variants explained 91.7%, 82.4% and 95.8%, of the variation respectively. Each geographic location was correctly classified in 92.9% for Turkish and 98.4% New Zealand specimens. Fish scale shape was less effective in discriminating species from distantly related members, but better when the discrimination was among fish families, and best between fish scales for the same family but different body shapes.