International Journal of Aquaculture, 2015, Vol.5, No.7, 1
-
6
1
Research Report Open Access
Length-weight relationship and morphological studies of the
Polydactylus
sextarius
,
Nemipterus japonicus
and
Pampus argenteus
from the Fiery Cross Reef,
South China Sea
Long Wang
1,2,3
, Nan Zhang
1
, Zhenhua Ma
1
, Huayang Guo
1
, Caiyan Zhu
1
, Dianchang Zhang
1
1. South China Sea Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Guangzhou, 510300 P. R. China
2. Key Laboratory of South China Sea Fishery Resources Exploitation and Utilization, Ministry of Agriculture, Guangzhou, 510300, P.R. China
3. College of Fisheries and Life Science, Shanghai Ocean University, shanghai, 201306, China
Corresponding author Email
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2015, Vol.5, No.7 doi: 10.5376/ija.2015.05.0007
Received: 17 Mar., 2015
Accepted: 08 May., 2015
Published: 14 May., 2015
Copyright © 2015 Wang et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Wang et al., 2015,
Length-weight relationship and morphological studies of the
Polydactylus sextarius
,
Nemipterus japonicus
and
Pampus argenteus
from the
Fiery Cross Reef, South China Sea, International Journal of Aquaculture, Vol.5, No.7: 1-6 (doi
Abstract
This paper reports the length-weight relationships and morphological characters of three fishes namely,
Polydactylus
sextarius
,
Nemipterus japonicus
and
Pampus argenteus
, collected from the Fiery Cross Reef (9
o
37’ N, 112
o
58’ E) of South China
Sea during November 2013. The length-weight relationships of the studied fishes can be expressed as
W
Po
=
1.17
L
1.46
for
P. sextarius,
W
Ne
=
0.07
L
2.73
for
N. japonicus
and
W
Pa
=
0.04
L
3.05
for
P. argenteus
. Growth of
P. argenteus
was found to be positive (
b
> 3) and
N.
japonicus
(
b
= 2.73) was negative allometric. Body length of
P. sextarius
varied from 100.36 to 119.43 mm, and the wet weight
ranged from 10.04 to 45.42 g. Body length of
N. japonicus
varied from 88.37 to 159.54 mm, wet weight ranged from 22.42 to 128.39
g. Body length of
P. argenteus
varied from 75.13 to 92.07 mm, and wet weight ranged from 20.58 to 42.27 g. The study provides first
biological reference in these species in Fiery Cross Reef, South China Sea. In addition, the results of the present study will offer
fundamental information for resource assessment as well as for taking up further aquaculture practices of these three species.
Keywords
Length-weight relationship; Morphometry;
Polydactylus sextarius
;
Nemipterus japonicas
;
Pampus argenteus
; Truss network
Introduction
Morphometric and meristic characters are frequently
used to identify or define the purpose of stock, and
thus is of strong interest in ichthyology (Tudela, 1999).
Among the morphometric measurement systems, truss
network analysis is a conventional method performed
in parallel with genetics because of easy operation,
and it can be used to re-evaluate past study data and
test their reliability in genetic data. The truss network
system is a powerful tool for the analysis of shape,
and designed to cover the animal’s body (Strauss and
Bookstein, 1982). Ideally, truss length measurement
between desired landmarks points should be curved
vectors (Humphries et al., 1981). Because of the
complicated calculations (Nie et al., 2013), Hockaday
et al. (2000) assumed that all distances measured
represented straight lines lying on the same plane to
simplify the method.
Length-weight relationship has been used to estimate
weight from length for individual fish, fish length
classes and the standing-crop biomass (Anderson and
Gutreuter, 1983) when the length frequency
distribution is known. And it can also be used to
calculate the selected species condition index as well
as the life history and morphological difference
between populations from different regions (Peterakis
and Stergiou, 1995; Goncalces et al
.
, 1997). Therefore,
length-weight relationship plays an important role in
fishery science and population dynamics.
Polydactylus sextarius
belongs to the family of
Polynemidae and is a common seawater species
widely distributed in Indo-Pacific Ocean, northern
Indian Ocean and South China Sea. It has a large-scale
commercial fishery value and also is a potentially
lucrative product for Hawaiian aquaculture because of
its delicate flavor (Kam et al., 2003). Due to overfishing,
the wild resources of
P. sextarius
have dramatically
decreased in recent years, which have depressed the
thriving local market (Ostrowski and Molnar, 1998).
Nemipterus japonicus
was first recorded in the
Mediterranean Sea by Fisher and Whitehead (Fisher
