Mouth morphometry and body lengths with respect to the feeding habits of Hill stream fishes from Western Himalaya H.P. (INDIA)

Abstract

The hill stream fishes viz. Barilius bendelisis (Hamliton), Crossocheilus latius latius (Hamliton), Garra gotyla gotyla (Gray), Pethia ticto (Hamliton), Schizothorax richardsonii (Gray) and Mastacembelus armatus (Lecepede) collected from the streams of the Beas Drainage system (Himachal Pradesh) have been selected for the studies. The inter-relationship between mouth dimensions and relationship between mouth size dimensions & different body length i.e. HL and TL have been undertaken. Further, the mouth modification with respect to food and feeding habits has been explored which is helpful in understanding the trophic level of the fishes. During the studies it has been analysed that in case of B. bendelisis VG was almost equal to HG as such belong to the category of surface feeder- omnivore. M. armatus and P. ticto exhibited VG greater than HG and adopted for column-omnivore/carnivore feeding habit whereas in G. gotyla gotyla, S. richardsonii and C. latius latius HG was greater than VG and adopted for bottom- herbivore habit. The analytical techniques of statistics were used to analyse and interpret the results by using SPSS-16.0 software.