Morphometric, meristic and ISSR marker systems for species identification and evolutionary analysis in five Indian Channids

Snakehead species belonging to Channidae are primary group of freshwater air breathing fishes having their confined distribution in African and Asian continents. ISSR - PCR was used to investigate the phylogenetic relationship among five Channidae species viz. Channa striatus, Channa marulius, Channa punctatus, Channa diplogramme and Channa gachua. In addition, morphometric and meristic characters were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) and the bootstrap values within the species were also calculated. The genetic identity between the species ranged from 0.5526 to 0.7632 and the genetic distance ranged from 0.2703 to 0.5931. The Nei's gene diversity (H) was calculated as 0.2653 and the Shannon's information index (I) was 0.3842. UPGMA dendrogram arrived by the morphological and molecular markers revealed the closeness between C. striatus and C. marulius among the five species.