The Effect of Body Shape Type on Differentiability of Traditional and Geometric Morphometric Methods: A Case Study of Channa gachua (Hamilton, 1822)

Abstract

Objective: The morphological differences of two populations of the Dwarf snakehead, Channa gachua (Hamilton, 1822)from Sarbaz (Makran basin) and Halil (Hamun-e Jaz Murian basin) rivers were studied using geometric and traditionalmorphometrics (GM and TM) methods to test the hypothesis that the type of body shape can produce different results.Materials and Methods: A total of 16 landmark-points and 12 distance measurements were defined to analyse the bodyshape differences and the extracted data were analyzed using GM and TM methods.Results: Our findings reject the hypothesis, and the results revealed that GM is more effective in detecting meticulousmorphological differences.Conclusion: In addition, the results suggest selecting a proper method i.e. GM or TM, based on the degree of accuracyneeded i.e. if we need to find small shape differences within its signification, GM is a superior technique, or to show the typeof differences, then we can use TM.