Intra- and interspecific discrimination of Scorpaena species from the Aegean, Black, Mediterranean and Marmara seas

This study was conducted to discriminate five Scorpaena species and populations of each species according to morphometric characters. A total of 1865 fish specimens were collected from the eight locations in the four Turkish seas: Antalya, Balıkesir, Çanakkale, Hatay, İzmir, Marmara Ereğlisi, Ordu and Şile. In the study, 26 morphometric traits were measured for intra- and interspecific discrimination of five Scorpaena species. The data were subjected to analysis of variance, principal components analysis (PCA) and canonical discriminant analysis. As results of the PCA, 10 traits for S. maderensis and S. scrofa, 12 traits for S. elongata and 13 traits for S. notata and S. porcus were found to be important for intraspcific discrimination. The overall classification scores of intraspecific discrimination were determined as 94.6% for S. elongata, 90.5% for S. maderensis, 96.7% for S. notata, 96.5% for S. porcus and 92.2% for S. scrofa. The PCA indicated that 13 morphometric measurements among the 26 traits are important in the interspecific discrimination of five Scorpaena species. The cross-validated canonical discriminant analysis was correctly classified as 97.4% at the Scorpaena species level. The discrimination of correctly classified species ranged from 94.8% to 100%. Finally, we demonstrated that the morphometric characters examined in the present study can be used successfully in the intra- and interspecific discrimination of Scorpaena species from different habitats.