A CHECKLIST OF FRESHWATER PRAWN SPECIES OF THE PALAEMONIDAE FAMILY IN THE NORTHWEST PART OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

To formulate information on the freshwater prawn species and to identify any species at a glance clearly and simply a checklist of freshwater prawn species (Palaemonidae) collected from Northwest part of Bangladesh was prepared. A total of Sixty four samples of freshwater prawn were collected from the waterbody of Dinajpur, Rangpur and Thakurgoan districts of Bangladesh. Samples were observed through six morphological characters namely body color, the number of chela, rostrum shape, rostrum teeth, abdomen shape, segments size of walking leg and eight morphometric characters i.e. Total length (TL), Rostrum length (RL), Cephalothorax length (CL), Cephalothorax height (CH), Second pleon segment height (SSH), Sixth pleon segment length (SISL), TeL (Telson length), TeW (Telson width). After observing the morphological and morphometric characters a total of seven species were found to be different and identified by checking with previous literature. The identified species were Macrobrachium lanchesteri, M. palaemonides, M. lamarrei, M. idella, M. dolicodectylus and M. latidactylus. One way varience of analysis (ANOVA) at 5% level of significance showed significant difference among all the morphometric ratios (TL/RL, TL/CL, TL/TeL, CL/CH, TeL/TeW, SSH/SISL and RL/CL) except CL/CH that was found to be insignificant, p>0.05. The Pearson Correlation was also showed the ratios are found to be significant. The discriminate function analysis (DFA) revealed that seven morphometric ratios contributed six discriminate functions (DFs) that are accounted for six species by reducing a single species. DF1 accounted for 69.4%of the total variation while DF2, DF3, DF, DF5 and DF6 accounted for 15.5, 9.2, 4.8, 1.0 and 0.1% of the total variation respectively. This study synthesized a concise idea about the available freshwater prawn in Bangladesh. Several consecutive studies including DNA barcoding are needed to formulation exact information on the detail record of freshwater Palaemonid prawn in the waterbodies of Bangladesh.