Otolith morphology of inland Aphanius (Teleostei, Cyprinodontidae) from Iran - a new "tool" for the discrimination of endemic species?

伊朗是阿菲尼乌斯多样性的热点地区。迄今已发现5种特有种，该地区很可能还存在其他特有种。虽然物种被认为是非常相似的，甚至在外观形态上完全相同，但它们可以根据分子数据进行区分。然而，其中四个物种的耳石至今尚未被研究过。该项目主要研究耳石形态学能否作为鉴定伊朗特有阿菲尼乌斯的新“工具”，目前已有151个阿菲尼乌斯标本供本项目使用。耳石形态分析将采用一种新的综合定性定量方法，该方法最近由申请人和共同作者介绍。如果我们能成功地证明这些耳石代表了诊断上可靠的形态学特征，我们将有助于识别新的、稀有的和/或濒危的耳石物种及其地理分布。我们期望结果可以转移到其他鱼类科，即耳石形态-如果对特有的aphhanius物种的诊断可靠-随后也可以用于迄今为止缺乏区分外部形态特征的其他物种的区分。此外，我们将大大提高淡水鱼类耳石作为古生物学数据来源的价值，这些数据可用于河流和湖泊系统的古地理分析。

Iran is a hot spot of Aphanius diversity. Five endemic species have been described to date, and it is very likely that additional endemic species occur in this region. Although the species are considered as very similar or even identical with regard to external morphology, they can be discriminated based on molecular data. However, the otoliths of four of these species have not been studied up to date. The project focuses on the question as to whether otolith morphology can be established as a new “tool” for the discrimination of the endemic Aphanius species from Iran. 151 Aphanius specimens are available for this project. Otolith morphology will be analyzed with a new combined qualitativequantitative method that was recently introduced by the applicant and co-authors. If we are successful in documenting that the otoliths represent diagnostically reliable morphological features, we would facilitate the identification of new, rare, and/or endangered Aphanius species and their geographic distribution. We expect that the results can be transferred to other fish families, i.e. that otolith morphology – if diagnostically reliable for the endemic Aphanius species - can subsequently also be used for the discrimination of other species that lack distinguishing external morphological characters so far. Furthermore, we would considerably increase the value of otoliths from freshwater fishes as a palaeontological source of data that can be used in palaeogeographic analyses of river and lake systems.