Morphometric Characterization of African bonytongue (Heterotis niloticus Cuvier, 1829) Found in the Lower River Niger of Nigeria

This study was conducted to characterize the African bonytongue (Heterotis niloticus) found in the lower River Niger of Nigeria at the following locations; Onitsha (6.1329° N, 6.7924°E), Illah (6.4219° N, 6.6491°E) and Ilushi (6.6688° N, 6.6304°E) with the use of morphometric (measured distance) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD). A total of one hundred and fifty (150) samples were used for the study. Morphometric distances of body parts were subjected to the Principal Component Analysis on Unscramble@ X version 10.4 software. DNA samples were analyzed using muscular portion of the caudal region. Genomic molecular analysis was carried out for the RAPD band pattern. Denodogram was constructed using clustering analysis (UPGMA). PCR was confirmed using gel electrophoreses. Result shows that the Anal fin length at Illah point is statistically significant to Illushi but different from Onitsha, with F value of 3.326 and the P value of 0.039 and standard deviation of 0.1479, snout length of fish sampled at Onitsha is significantly different from those sampled in Illah and Illushi, having F value of 3.837 and P value of 0.024 and standard deviation of 0.0125, Dorsal fin length sampled in Illushi is statistically significant to Illah but different from Onitsha having F value of 4.164, P value 0.017 with standard deviation of 0.0145. A total of 46% of original grouped cases were correctly classified, while 45.3% of cross-validated grouped cases were also classified with overall diversity of 0.67 to 1.00. This gives respective similarity coefficients of 0.45, 0.37 and 0.31.