RESEARCH ARTICLE
Morphometric Measurements, Meristic Counts, and Molecular Identification of Alestes Dentex, Alestes Baremoze, Brycinus Nurse, and Brycinus macrolepidotus from the River Nile at Kreima
Amna T. M. Mohammed1, 2, *, Zuheir N. Mahmoud1, Hind M. Abushama1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 7
First Page: 25
Last Page: 38
Publisher Id: TOBIOJ-7-25
DOI: 10.2174/1874196701907010025
Article History:
Received Date: 15/01/2019Revision Received Date: 11/07/2019
Acceptance Date: 12/07/2019
Electronic publication date: 30/08/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction:
Twenty-two morphometric characters and seven meristic counts were recorded from 324 Alestes specimens from Kreima at the River Nile.
Materials and Methods:
Specimens collected were identified to the species level as Alestes baremoze (100 specimens), Brycinus nurse (100 specimens), Brycinus macrolepidotus (24 specimens), and Alestes dentex (100 specimens). The principal component analysis showed that the lateral line scales and the scale above the lateral line contributed to the percentage variance by 97.01% and 2.56%, respectively. Discriminant function analysis was done to discriminate between field-collected samples of Alestes sp. The LLS, AFR, and LDFL (Longest of Dorsal Fin Lings) were found to be the main characters that discriminate between the four populations.
Results and Discussion:
The first function showed that they were significantly different. This discrimination was a complete one since 98.1% of original grouped specimens and 97.8% of the cross-validated ones were correctly classified. The scatter plot of Discriminant scores from the three functions showed some relatedness between Alestes baremoze and Alestes dentex.
16S ribosomal RNA primers have been used to identify the species at the molecular level. All species have shown a characteristic band (680 bp) indicating successful amplification. Five RAPD primers have been used to investigate the Alestes species. Similar and dissimilar DNA bands indicate the evolutionary connections and genetic spacing, respectively. The derived dendrograms based on morphometric measurements and meristic counts were closer to that derived from the RAPD PCR results.
Conclusion:
The study showed co-existence of four Alestes species in the main River Nile.
