Taxonomic validation of five fish species of subfamily Barbinae from the Ganga river system of northern India using traditional and truss analyses

Morphometric differences were investigated among five fish species of subfamily Barbinae from the Ganga river system through traditional morphometrics and the truss network system. Species taken into account were Puntius chola (Hamilton 1822), Puntius sophore (Hamilton 1822), Pethia ticto (Hamilton 1822), Pethia conchonius (Hamilton 1822) and Systomus sarana (Hamilton 1822). Although, taxonomists carefully examine external body features to discriminate these species, there is still a risk of misidentification during a visual assessment. In the present study, the traditional morphological analysis included 22 morphometric measurements and 10 meristic counts. Truss network system of 14 landmarks was interconnected to yield 91 distance variables. The principal component analysis (PCA), discriminant function analysis (DFA) and cluster analysis (CA) were employed in order to determine morphometric variations. In traditional analysis, 29 characters out of 32 were found significant (pp