Morphometric and meristic characters of Otolithoides pama (Hamilton, 1822) occurring in Hooghly-Matlah estuarine system of West Bengal, India

Abstract

The present study analysed the morphometric and meristic characters of Otolithoides pama (Hamilton, 1822) collected from the Hooghly-Matlah estuarine system of West Bengal, India. A total of 618 specimens (298 males and 320 female) were collected during the period of 18 months from November 2016 to April 2018 with length ranging from 100-384 mm and weight 7.29-470.71 g, respectively. The analysis of 14 morphometric characters revealed that standard length has the fastest growth rate when compared to total length, while eye diameter has the lowest growth rate when compared with head length. A high degree of significant positive correlation with the ‘r’ values ranging from 0.978 to 0.997 was observed among different morphometric characters of O. pama. Among nine of the meristic counts, the coefficient of variation was found to be highest in anal fin rays (6.31%) and minimum in dorsal fin rays (1.12%). Based on the meristic counts, the fin formula of O. pama from the present study can be described as B. 7 , D. 9-10/1/44-45, P. i/16-17, V. 1/5 , A. 2/7-8, C. 19-21, L. 48-52. The number of gill rakers on the first left gill arch ranged from 19-21.

Keywords: Hooghly-Matlah Estuary, Morphometric characters, Meristic counts, Otolithoides pama, West Bengal