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Abstract

This study investigated the morphological and growth responses of juvenile common carp (Cyprinus carpio) to four environmental stressors: cadmium, malathion, pH, and moderate salinity. A total of 120 specimens were exposed to the treatments under controlled laboratory conditions. Standardized photographs were taken from the left lateral side, and 18 homologous landmarks were digitized using tpsDig software. Geometric morphometric analyses, including Procrustes superimposition, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Canonical Variate Analysis (CVA), and Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA), were conducted using the Specify software. Results indicated significant differences in body shape among treatments, with cadmium exposure producing the most severe deformations in cranial and caudal regions and the greatest reduction in centroid size and standard length. pH caused notable changes in shape in the ventral and anterior body regions. In contrast, salinity treatment led to increased centroid size and deeper body profiles, suggesting adaptive morphological plasticity. Malathion-exposed specimens showed mild but statistically significant changes, particularly in the abdominal and head areas. CVA and DFA confirmed high classification accuracy (81.33%) among treatments, demonstrating the sensitivity of geometric morphometrics in detecting stressor-induced shape variation. These findings highlight the utility of shape-based analyses as early indicators of environmental stress and support their application in freshwater biomonitoring programs.

Keywords

Geometric morphometric Fish Morphological plasticity Heavy metals Malathion

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The authors transfer the copyrights of their papers to the Iranian Society of Ichthyology. However, the information could be used in accordance with the Creative Commons licence (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

How to Cite
Khammar, Z., Tabatabaei Yazdi, F., & Zahedi, S. (2026). Morphological responses of Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) to environmental stressors using geometric morphometric technique. Iranian Journal of Ichthyology, 12(3), 248–265. https://doi.org/10.22034/iji.v12i3.1090
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