Intraspecific Diversity of Freshwater Murrel, Channa punctatus

Abstract

Variation in the morphometric and meristic characters of Channa punctatus (Bloch, 1793) across the different environmental gradient was analyzed in order to study the intraspecific divergence in C. punctatus. A linear relationship was noted between different body measurements and total length of the fish in each environment. Significant variations in the morphometric and meristic characters were noted between the populations of C. punctatus. In one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), a total of 13 morphometric traits out of 15 and 2 meristic traits out of 5 were found to be significantly different (p<0.05) between the populations, in which most of the morphometric traits were highly significant (p<0.001). Differences between the slopes of various regression lines of each morphometric measurements between the compared populations were also found to be significant at 0.1%, 1% and 5%. These findings indicate the presence of different phenotypic stocks of C. punctatus across the environmental gradient.