Morphological Variations Among the Chinese Species of Sinibrama (Pisces:Teleostei:Cyprinidae),with Comments on Their Species Validities

Data on 32 morphometric and seven meristic characters of 224 specimens from four currently recognized Sinibrama species in southern China were collected by using multivariate morphometrics and traditional taxonomy methods,and then analyzed with the principal component analysis for investigating morphological variations among them and evaluate their species validities.The meristic characters showed that S.affinis is clearly distinct from other congeners,and S.taeniatus is separated distinctly from S.macrops,but from S.wui to that extent that both have no overlap in the scatterplots of the first two principal components.And the specimen from the Wu Jiang and Pearl River are significantly different from each other,though they are presently reported as the same species,S.macrops,while no intraspecific variations are found among populations of S.wui.According to the morphometric characters,S.taentiatus is clearly separated from other species;S.macrops has two distinct populations,of which the Wu Jiang population is discriminated from those of S.wui and S.affins,but no difference is found between the Pearl River population of S.macrops and those of S.wui and S.affins.Above results indicate that S.taeniatus and S.affinis are two valid species;S.macrops involves two distinct species,of which the Wu Jiang population represents an unnamed species,and the Pearl River population is conspecific with S.wui.