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An Effort toward Species Delimitation in the Genus Carassius (Cyprinidae) using Morphology and the Related Challenges: A Case Study from Inland Waters of Iran

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Abstract

Invasive freshwater fish species are considered a global threat to freshwater biodiversity and one of the leading factors responsible for species extinction. The freshwater species of genus Carassius are dispersed either naturally or due to human activities almost around the globe. The species identification in this genus using conventional morphological approaches bring up so many ambiguities because of high morphological similarities between the species, while taxonomic information is necessary prior to any biological study specifically when it comes to invasive alien species. The present study aims to delimitate two genetically identified Carassius species (Carassius gibelio and C. auratus) in some important freshwater ecosystems in Iran, which could be useful for early detection of species and discuss the reliability of the outcomes. For this purpose, morphometric and meristic variables were analyzed using Principal Component Analysis and one-way ANOVA analyses. The results showed significant differentiation between the surveyed individuals for each of the mentioned species. Despite this clear separation, there are factors such as ploidy level, hybridization and environmental-mediated morphological plasticity, which can put the results into the challenge. Consequently, several considerations need to be taken into account when dealing with morphological studies in the genus Carassius.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to show our gratitude to Amir Elmi and Omid Sedighi, experts of the Office of Wildlife and Aquatic Affairs of the Department of Environmental for facilitating the sampling process; Amir Ali Ahmadi, an expert from the Tehran provincial Department of Environmental; Keyvan Abbasi from the Inland Waters Aquaculture Research Institute of Anzali port; Hossein Valikhani from the Environmental Sciences Research Institute of Shahid Beheshti University and Farshad Nejat from Department of Botany and Zoology, Masaryk University for their kind assistance in sampling and finally; Kiavash Golzarianpour from the Department of Biology, University of Tehran, Kateřina Rylková from the Department of Genetics and Breeding of Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague and Martin Knytl from Department of Cell Biology, Charles University in Prague for their instructions toward conducting the analysis and interpreting the results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Sciences and Marine Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

    M. Khosravi, F. Tajbakhsh, H. Nemati & B. H. Kiabi

  2. Department of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, Environmental Sciences Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

    M. Khosravi, A. Abdoli & F. Ahmadzadeh

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  1. M. Khosravi
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Khosravi, M., Abdoli, A., Tajbakhsh, F. et al. An Effort toward Species Delimitation in the Genus Carassius (Cyprinidae) using Morphology and the Related Challenges: A Case Study from Inland Waters of Iran. J. Ichthyol. 62, 185–194 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0032945222020096

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