Alimentary canal metrics of Schizothorax niger Heckel 1838 in Dal Lake, Kashmir

Schizothorax niger (Heckel, 1838) is an indigenous cyprinid fish of Kashmir, locally known as “Ael gad”. This fish belongs to order Cyprinidae and family Cypriniformes. It forms an important fishery resource of the Kashmir valley. This study was aimed at describing some gut morphometrics and abdominal indices of the fish. Among gut morphometric characters, highest correlation for all the 14 characters studied was seen for Zihler’s Index (r =0.995, p<0.01). The statistical analysis for the gut morphometric parameters showed the maximum mean value for gut length (512.33 mm) and minimum for relative gut mass (0.06), while as highest correlation coefficient (R²) among different abdominal indices with respect to body weight was obtained for gut weight (R²=0.529).