Diversity of Puntius sp. (Cyprinidae: Cypriniformes) collected from Banshlai River, Birbhum, West Bengal, India

Puntius species are marked by various morphometric characters and colour pattern. The present study describes the morphometric variations and colour pattern of five species of Puntius, viz. P. gelius, P. ticto, P. conchonius, P. sophore, and P. chola collected from Banshlai River of Birbhum district, West Bengal, India. Among five species P. chola is quite different in respect to body marking, presence of rostral barbels and other morphometric characters like minimum eye diameter (35.35% HL), caudal peduncle depth (14.37% SL), caudal fin length (26.97% of SL), preventral length (46.81% SL) and predorsal length (51.30% SL). Both P. gelius and P. conchonius have black spot on caudal peduncle but length of dorsal fin base in P. gelius is greater compared to that of P. conchonius (19.47% SL vs. 17.15% SL), but reverse is true in case of body depth (25.38% SL vs. 27.40% SL). Both P. ticto and P. sophore have serrated dorsal spine and orange anal fin in common, but the values of prepectoral length and interorbital distance is greater in P. ticto compared to P. sophore (29.09% SL vs. 26.38%SL and 52.27% HL vs. 48.51% HL respectively), but snout length and dorsal fin base length is greater in P. sophore (36.36% HL vs. 33.65% HL and 21.59% SL vs. 19.49% SL).PCA and heatmap are used to establish the identity of five species of Puntius sp. A key to five species of Puntius sp. is presented here.The variation of morphometric characters from earlier studies of different workers outside West Bengal may be due to variations of different environmental factors that govern the growth and morphometry of a particular species.