Sphyraena sphyraena (Linnaeus, 1758)

Bourehail, Nadjette, Morat, Fabien, Lecomte-Finiger, Raymonde & Kara, M. Hichem, 2015, Using otolith shape analysis to distinguish barracudas Sphyraena sphyraena and Sphyraena viridensis from the Algerian coast, Cybium 39 (4), pp. 271-278 : 276

Discrimination of S. sphyraena and S. viridensis

In this study, the discriminant analysis indicated a clear differentiation in otolith shape between the two species of Barracuda S. sphyraena and S. viridensis with more than 80% of individuals correctly classified. Different results are common in the literature. Friedland and Reddin (1994) consider only discriminant values of> 75% as acceptable. The 75% accuracy for Cynoscion nebulosus (Cuvier, 1830) were reported for the Galveston Bay system using scale and otolith shape Fourier descriptors ( Colura and King, 1995). Simoneau et al. (2000) obtained values of up to 70% accuracy analysing differentiation of six populations of lake trout Salvelinus namaycush in Canadian rivers, whereas a greater classification success of 56–81% was reported in year classes in the identification of haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus stocks from George Bank ( Begg and Brown, 2000). De Vries et al. (2002) obtained 81.6% accuracy in differentiating stocks of king mackerel Scomberomorus cavalla between the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Tuset et al. (2003a) demonstrated that regional differences in the comber Serranus cabrilla existed between the Canary Islands and Alicante with an accuracy of 68.8%. The estimate of Cohen’s kappa indicated that these success rates were significantly better than the 50% expected by chance alone.

In conclusion, in this study, the data indicated a high discrimination rate. This suggests that variability in otolith shape is a good tool for species identification in S. sphyraena and S. viridensis because the mean value of the classification percentage (80%) is comparable to those obtained in other studies using the same type of analysis ( Friedland and Reddin, 1994; Colura and King, 1995; De Vries et al., 2002; Tuset et al., 2003a, b). Thus, further research is needed, including genetic studies to complement information collected on these species.

Acknowledgements. – The authors are thankful to the Algerian Ministry of Superior Education and Scientific Research, which financed this study within the framework of the Research National Fund (RNF).