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Distribution of Marine Puffer and Porcupinefishes (Order: Tetraodontiformes) from Tamil Nadu Coast, Southern India

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, India Section B: Biological Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The marine pufferfishes (Family: Tetraodontidae) and porcupinefishes (Family: Diodontidae) were collected from major fish landing centres viz. Royapuram (station I), Cuddalore (station II), Nagapattinam (station III), Mandapam (station IV) and Kanyakumari (station V) along the Tamil Nadu coast, Southeast coast of India. Monthly sample collections were carried out for a period of 1 year from August 2014 to July 2015 from these five major fish landing centres. Overall, 12,112 fishes were collected which belongs to 15 species, 9 genera and two families Tetraodontidae and Diodontidae under the order Tetraodontiformes. It was also found that all the 15 species were not available in all the five stations. The collected 15 species were identified as Arothron immaculatus, A. reticularis, A. hispidus, A. stellatus, Arothron sp., Lagocephalus guentheri, L. sceleratus, L. lunaris, Takifugu oblongus, Torquigener brevipinnis, Chelonodon patoca, Canthigaster solandri, Diodon holocanthus, cyclichthys orbicularis and Chilomycterus reticulatus. The maximum distribution of pufferfishes was observed in Mandapam followed by Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Royapuram and Kanyakumari. The present study clearly showed that 15 species of pufferfishes and porcupinefishes were reported which includes 6 additional distribution records as compared with previous literature. The study also presented the distributional updates of pufferfishes and porcupinefishes along with taxonomic features and figures for identification of species.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the authorities of Bharathidasan University for facilities provided. Authors also thank to University Grants Commissions/Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship (UGC/RGNF), New Delhi, Government of India for financial assistance.

Funding

This work was partly funded by University Grants Commissions/Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship (UGC/RGNF), New Delhi, Government of India (F1-17.1/2016-17/RGNF-2015-17-SC-TAM-19298/(SA-III Website).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DNA Barcoding and Marine Genomics Laboratory, Department of Marine Science, School of Marine Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, 620 024, India

    Karunanidhi Kaleshkumar, Rajendran Rajaram, Shanmugam Vinothkumar & Anbazhagan Vinothkannan

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  1. Karunanidhi Kaleshkumar
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  2. Rajendran Rajaram
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  3. Shanmugam Vinothkumar
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  4. Anbazhagan Vinothkannan
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Correspondence to Rajendran Rajaram.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards

The marine puffer and porcupinefishes were collected from fish landing centres as a trash items and are not governed by any law. Therefore, the organisms were not placed for Institutional Animal Ethical Committee (IAEC) approval. All the experiments were performed for best practice according to Bharathidasan University IAEC guidelines. It is also informed that, as per the guidelines of the CPCSEA (Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals), use of this fish is not subject to approval by the IAEC. Furthermore, we did not conduct any experimentation with human subjects.

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Significance Statement

Overall, 12,112 fishes were collected from five major fish landing centres which belong to 15 species, 9 genera and 2 families under the order Tetraodontiformes. Among 15 species includes 6 additional distribution records as compared with previous literature.

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Kaleshkumar, K., Rajaram, R., Vinothkumar, S. et al. Distribution of Marine Puffer and Porcupinefishes (Order: Tetraodontiformes) from Tamil Nadu Coast, Southern India. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. B Biol. Sci. 91, 153–162 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-020-01212-z

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