International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.45, 1-7
1
Research Report Open Access
Morphometric, Meristic and Some Biological Aspects of
Acropoma japonicum
(Gunther, 1859) Recorded from the Indian Waters
K.S.N. Reddy, A.Siva , Premchand
Fishery Survey of India, Mumbai, India
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.45 doi
Received: 21 Jun., 2016
Accepted: 31 Oct., 2016
Published: 02 Nov., 2016
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
:
Reddy K.S.N., Siva A. and Premchand, 2016, Morphometric, Meristic and Some Biological Aspects of
Acropoma japonicum
(Gunther, 1859) Recorded from
the Indian Waters, International Journal of Marine Science, 6(45): 1-7 (doi
Abstract
Glowbelly (
Acropoma japonicum
) belongs to the family Acropomatidae and popularly known to occur in deeper waters.
Its record in the east coast and west coast of India was studied for its morphometric, meristic, length & weight and also some
biological aspects. The meristic analyses indicated that the high degree of correlation between total length and each of other body
measurement. Morphometric counts and length frequency studies was found useful in characterizing its population. No significant
difference could be observed in the mean values from a set of observations which is normally distributed from east coast while
comparing with the distribution of a single cohort of the species caught at west coast of India. In the present study, an attempt has
been made to define identification characteristics and characterizing its population by studying its morphometric, meristic and size
distribution. The morphometric relationships revealed that in respect of total length, the fork length grows faster (b=0.87) than
standard length (b=0.81), whereas, body depth grows faster (b=0.27) than head length (b=0.22) and length of I
st
dorsal fin grows
faster (b=0.13) than II
nd
dorsal fin (b=0.11), in respect of head length as independent character (X), revealed that the pre-dorsal length
grows faster (b=0.48) than the inter-orbital length (b=0.27) and the eye diameter (b=0.31). The females were found dominate the
males in all the size groups, with an aggregate sex ratio 1.3:1. The length-weight relationship for males, females and pooled was
found to be
respectively.
The coefficient of determination for male, female and combined found to be 0.7163, 0.7227 and 0.7747 respectively, indicating that
only 72%, 72% and 77% of variation in weight is explained by the total length in respect of male, female and combined. The species
found to be mainly feeding upon the items like juvenile of the shrimps and occasionally on detritus. As there is no more information
available on the abundance, maturation and spawning of the species from Indian waters the need of the hour is to workout resource
specific stock assessment and its utilization for the future as more fishing pressure prevails up to 100m depth and also the future
fisheries only towards deep sea resources.
Keywords
Acropoma sp.
; Glowbelly; L-W and morphometric & meristic relationship; Indian waters
Introduction
Acropoma japonicum
commonly called Glowbelly / Lanternbellies belongs to the family Acropomatidae is
popularly known to occur in deeper waters. It inhabits sand and sandy mud bottoms. A peculiar character of this
fish that made it different from other species was the position of anus, anus was very close to the pelvic fin origin,
a light organ was present between pelvic fins. Two luminous organs placed longitudinally from thorax to beyond
the anus.
A. japonicum
is distinguished from other species of Acropomatidae family in having light organ and
ctenoid scales (Narges et al., 2012). Laternbellies are known for their ventral luminous organs. The family
comprises 31 species from seven genera throughout the world. Out of seven, the genus Acropoma contains five
valid species, all occurring in the Indo-Pacific area; of which only
Acropoma japonicum
was reported previously
from Indian waters (Prasanna et al., 2012). Acropomatidae are widely distributed and deep water fishes inhabiting
a depth of 20-700m, mesopelagic depth, fishing by midwater trawlers off Iran (Narges et al., 2012). According to
Noboru et.al.,(2005) the catch of
A. japonicum
in number and mass, with a minority of such demersal fishes as
lizardfishes, cardinal fishes, pony fishes, gobies, lefteye flounders and soles.
