Characterization of morphological and meristic traits and their variations between two different populations (wild and cultured) of <i>Cichlasoma festae</i>, a species native to tropical Ecuadorian rivers

This study was carried out to determine morphometric and meristic characteristics of two populations (wild and cultured) of <i>Cichlasoma festae</i> and to establish whether populations could be discriminated based on morphometric variability. Twenty-two morphometric and four meristic characters were used to test the hypothesis differentiation. Univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) from 100 adult specimens showed significant differences (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.05) for 21 standardized morphometric measurements out of 26 characters among the means of the wild and cultured <i>Cichlasoma festae</i> populations tested. Cross correlation amongst certain morphometric variables (i.e. body weight, total length, standard length, pre-ventral length, AC1, LC1 and P1) were medium-strong (<i>r</i> ≥ 0.5), while the remaining were weakly correlated (<i>r</i> &lt; 0.5). The length–weight relationship parameter <i>b</i> and condition factor (K) values were respectively 2.21 and 1.97 (indicating allometric growth) for cultured fish groups and 2.86 and 4.07 (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.05) for wild fish groups. The condition factor values were significantly different from each other and showed that feeding of cultured fish should be improved. Both groups were accurately separated (&gt; 80 % success rate) by linear discriminant functions that included only four morphometric measures