author(s)
Arun Kumar, Mrinal Kanti Datta, Lekiningroy Dann, Debashis Jena, Sengbira K Sangma, Shrish Chandra Yadav and Pramod Kumar Pandey

abstract
In the present study, four genus of barb fishes comprising of six species i.e., Puntius chola, P. sophore, Pethia conchonius, P. ticto, Barbus gonionotus and Systomus sarana were studied which were collected from Tripura state of India. The similarity in morphological features and colour pattern some time makes taxonomic identification of this genus difficult. Considering these facts, the present study was carried out for the systematic study of this group in Tripura by morphological methods i.e. by morphometric and meristic study. In this study, most of the meristic characters were found to be overlapping. However, some characters like pectoral fin ray, pelvic fin ray and circumpendicular scales could be taken for the separation of P. conchonius (i/17-18), B. gonionotus (i/6-7) and S. sarana (15-17) respectively from rest of the species. The discriminant function analysis (DFA) of the morphometric data showed that body depth (Root value: 0.655), anal fin base length (Root value: 0.4211) and dorsal fin base length (Root value: 0.236) were the characters of Root 1 that separated P. ticto and P. conchonicus from others while the characters like distance between pectoral-pelvic fin (Root value: 0.406), pelvic fin length (Root value: 0.201) and pre pelvic length (Root value: 0.151) of Root 2separated S. sarana from P. sophore. Characters like inter-orbital length (Root value: 0.474) and dorsal fin base length (Root value: 0.442) of Root 3 differentiated B. gonionotus from the other species. However, DFA could not separate P. conchonius and P. ticto.