Morphometric Structuring of the Anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus L.) in the Black, Aegean and Northeastern Mediterranean Seas

Abstract

The status of populations of anchovies in Turkish terrestrial waters was preliminarily investigated using morphometric characters with the truss network system. Samples were taken from the main fishing areas of each sea, comprising the central (Sinop) and eastern (Trabzon) Black Sea, the Aegean Sea (İzmir) and the eastern Mediterranean (İskenderun). Plotting discriminant functions 1 and 2, explaining 93% of between-group variability, revealed a high degree of dissimilarity among the anchovy samples, indicating that the anchovies in each sea represent different aggregations. The overall random assignment of individuals into their original group was high (80%). Pairwise comparisons using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed highly significant differences between all the samples (P < 0.001). Univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant differences with varying degrees between the means of the 4 samples for 16 out of 25 standardized morphometric measurements. Principal components analysis (PCA) indicated that the observed differences were mainly from the measurements taken from the head.