A Report on Ecotypes of Setipinna phasa (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822) from Indian Waters

Özet

Species of genus Setipinna are major contributors in total landings of anchovies. Under the genus, four species havebeen reported from Indian waters. Among them, Setipinna phasa is a dominant species, distributed in Ganga river systemfrom Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal coast of India. The identity of Setipinna species was found to be ambiguousthat needed validation; hence, in the present study, Setipinna species were collected from Diamond harbour and DighaMohana, West Bengal, India for differentiation based on morphological, meristic and molecular traits. ANOSIM, SIMPERand principal component analysis of twenty three morphometric characters revealed difference among the three variants of S.phasa. While DNA barcoding using mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and 16S ribosomal RNA gene showedvery less divergence values (0.00-0.008) among these variants. Further phylogenetic analysis using combined DNA sequences(COI and 16S rRNA) displayed clustering of these variants of S. phasa with significant bootstrap values. Hence the studyconcludes that even though variants of Setipinna displayed considerable morphological variations, they are not distinctgenetically from S. phasa species. Thus the variants of the species seem to be ecotypes of S. phasa and a base in the evolutionof others Setipinna species.