DISTRIBUTION AND STATUS OF SPINED LOACH POPULATIONS (Actinopetrigii: Cobitidae) ALONG THE SOUTHERN CASPIAN SEA BASIN

Sa？etak In order to clarify the distribution pattern of Cobitis populations along the southern Caspian Sea basin, 97 specimens collected from five localities were morphologically examined. Univariate analysis of variance showed significant differences (P<0.05) among the means of the five groups for 28 of 33 standardized morphometric measurements and 7 of 10 meristic counts. In the linear discriminant function analysis (DFA) for morphometric characteristics, the overall assignment of individuals into their original groups was high (84.9%), indicating that these populations are highly divergent. The proportion of individuals correctly classi？ed into their original groups were 77.4%, 77.3%, 100%, 100% and 89.5% for Cobitis sp. (Gisum River), Cobitis keyvani (Sefidroud River), C. keyvani (Tonekabon River), Cobitis faridpaki (Siahroud River) and C. keyvani (Talar River), respectively. Clustering based on Euclidean distances among these groups of centroids using UPGMA and principal components analysis (PCA) indicated that the southeastern Caspian spined loach populations are C. faridpaki and the south central ones are C. keyvani and an unknown population, Cobitis sp. is distinguished from the southwestern populations of the basin. Also the Tonekabon and Sefidroud Rivers were determined to be the two new habitats for C. keyvani in the region