Length Weight Relationship Of Three Cobitid Loaches From Manipur, An Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot Region In India

Abstract

The Length-weight relationship (LWR) of three cobitid loaches: Lepidocephalichthys berdmorei (Blyth, 1860), Pangio pangia (Hamilton, 1822), and Lepidocephalichthys irrorata (Hora, 1921) were studied quarterly between March 2021 and May 2022. Fish were collected from selected sampling sites in Manipur using traditional fishing methods. Length and weight measured were calculated by the allometric growth formula (Ricker, 1973) for the three loaches and the condition factor (Fulton,1904) was also calculated.  The value of b was found to be 3.12 in L. berdmorei, 2.58 in P. pangia, and 2.98 in L. irrorata. The regression coefficient(r²) was observed to be 0.97,0.96 and 0.92 respectively. The condition factor(K) value ranges from 0.528 to 0.734 in L. berdmorei, 0.335 to 0.474 in P. pangia, and 0.408 to 0.595 in L. irrorata. It can be concluded from the study that L. berdmorei shows positive allometric growth while L. irrorata and P. pangia show negative allometric growth. This biological parameter in these species has never been explored before from Manipur.