DNA BARCODING TO RESOLVE MORPHOLOGICAL AMBIGUITY OF YELLOWFIN SNAPPER, Lutjanus xanthopinnis FROM TERENGGANU

Abstract

Lutjanus species that belong to family Lutjanidae is a common species in Malaysia. The fish which also known as snapper are the fish that can be found in abundance in most fish landings, including at Terengganu. One of the species is Lutjanus xanthopinnis or commonly known as yellowfin snapper. However, their morphological characteristics were doubted as it is hard to be distinguish by morphometric and meristic identification alone. This study was conducted by collecting 60 samples from fish landing area in Besut, Kuala Nerus, Kuala Terengganu and Marang, Terengganu. Two types of approaches were used in this study, namely morphometric and meristic identification, followed by molecular identification using the CO1 gene marker for the five morphological ambiguous samples. A total of 40 morphometric measurements and 9 meristic measurements were taken. The results from morphometric and meristic identification indicate the possible species was the L. xanthopinnis as there were three characters of meristic counts were similar to the previous report while there was additional one ray of soft dorsal fin rays and soft anal fin rays, respectively. However, the number of gills rakers were lesser than the reported. Molecular identification for the five samples however revealed that three samples were identified as L. xanthopinnis, one sample as L. vitta and L. lutjanus, respectively with 99 % to 100 % percentage of identical. The study proved that molecular identification via DNA barcoding is a complementary tool to morphological identification for more accurate identification. It is recommended that fresh samples should be used in future study besides taking more samples from other states. DNA barcoding should also continue to be used in species validation to achieve the highest accuracy as possible