We conducted this study in order to determine the morphometric and the genetic variation of four species of Chrysichthys genus (Chrysichthys nigrodigitatus, C. maurus, C. auratus, C. Johnelsi) from the Bia River. The discriminant analysis and cluster analysis were used to study the morphological variation. Discriminant analysis with selected 9 morphological parameters showed that the identification accuracy was between 93.33% and 100%, and global identification accuracy was 95, 83%. The results of cluster analysis indicated that the four species were clustered into three distinct groups: the first group included C. maurus and C. nigrodigitatus; the second group is composed of C. auratus; whereas the last group is made of C. johnelsi. Mitochondrial DNA sequencing of the nine Chrysichthys samples showed that a total of eight haplotypes for the two subgenera (C. chrysichthys and C. melanodactylus). The genetic diversity among C. chrysichthys is determined by haplotype and nucleotide diversities were 1 ± 0.177 and 0.023 ± 0.01, respectively whereas the values for the population of C. melanodactylus were 0.9 ± 0.161 and 0.022 ± 0.006. The High genetic diversity values and the non-significant neutrality tests found in this study, suggest that Chrysichthys population from the Bia River had a long evolutionary history in a large stable population.
COULIBALY-OUATTARA et al. (Mon,) studied this question.