Scale Characteristics of Three Fish Species of Genus Epinephelus From the Arabian Gulf at Kuwait

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Science, Faculty of Basic Education, Kuwait.

2 Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, 71516 Assiut, Egypt.

3 Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, New valley branch, Assiut University, Egypt.

Abstract

The present work has been suggested to screening and documenting the diversity of scale characteristics of three Epinephelus species, namely: E. bleekeri, E. coioides and E. latifasciatus from the Arabian Gulf at Kuwait. Scale characteristics, its detailed structure and superficial ornamentation were studied in terms of morphology and Scanning Electron Microscopic techniques. A wide spectrum of size-free interspecific variations was recorded concerning the surface morphology, shape of interradial tongues and the first circulus, the interradial circuli, most outer lateral circuli, inner lateral circuli, denticles, interradial and intercircular grooves, segmentation and granulation pattern of the caudal field and the shape of ctenii. The results of the present study has clearly indicated the potential application of scale shape variation in identification of Epinephelus species; and also, revealed that the qualitative characters of the scales of the three Epinephelus species studied exhibited species-specific valuable taxonomic characters for each species and indicated that such qualitative characters are genetically fixed and more stable.

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