Diversification of body shape in catfishes of the Ganga River

Catfishes of the order Siluriformes are an exceptionally diverse group occupying significant fraction of the world's freshwater ichthyofauna. Catfish species renders a model system for phylogenetic and evolutionary studies. However, there is dearth of knowledge on the phylogenetic history with reference to morphological diversity of catfishes in the Ganga River. Geometric morphometrics is an efficient approach to quantify shape variations and has lately found application in range of taxonomic, phylogenetic and evolutionary studies. This study utilizes photographs of 39 Gangetic catfishes to evaluate inter-specific phenotypic relationship through geometric morphometrics. PERMANOVA revealed significant relationship (F = 4.50, p < 0.0001) between shape of all the species. Procrustes ANOVA revealed significant relationship between shape and size (F = 17.67, p < 0.0001) and between shape (F = 34.95, p < 0.0001) of all species. The first two principal components of PCA accounted for ...