Stock structure analysis of ‘Aristeus alcocki Ramadan, 1938 (Decapoda: Aristeidae)’ in the Indian coast with truss network morphometrics

Aristeus alcocki Ramadan, 1938 is a deep sea penaeid shrimp that forms a major commercial fishery in the Indian coast. However, the spawning population of this species along the Indian coast is poorly known. To study this, stock structure of A. alcocki using truss morphometry was employed. A total of 1842 matured specimens were collected from five geographical locations (Tuticorin (SET), Chennai (SEC), Nagapattianam (SEN), Sakthikulangara (SWS), and Kalamuku (SWK)) along the Indian coast. Thirty-nine truss distances were extracted from each specimen and analyzed by multivariate methods via principal component analysis (PCA), discriminant functions (DF) and hierarchical cluster analysis. The results of PCA analysis indicate that the first two components cumulatively explained >70% (female: 72.1%; male: 71.5%) of the total morphometric variation. Stepwise discriminant function analysis indicated abdominal variables significantly discriminated the populations at different locations. The results clustered the five samples into a minimum of two groups, group-I included the samples from SWK while rest of the samples clustered in group-II. Morphometric variation between the groups was significant for each sex. Significant differences between the groups may be attributed to geographical and environmental conditions suggesting separate management strategies for the resource sustainability.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author