Abstracto

Factor Analysis of Associations for Fish Genera in Streams of Doon Valley

Deepali Rana, Ganesh Datt Bhatt

The study of fish diversity of Eastern and Western Doon Valley streams (2010-2012) viz., Baldi, Song and Suswa in East and Tons and Asan in West has revealed it to be represented by 56 species belonging to 5 Orders, 13 Families and 30 Genera. The present findings are the outcome of FactorAnalysis tool applied on 30 genera, fractionated into 2 categories viz., frequent (28 genera) and infrequent genera/species (2 genera + 12 species), with a view to find out determinants of associations amongst various genera. Four Factor groups (represented by 23 frequent genera + 1 set of infrequent genera/species) were obtained through oblique rotation of principal axes, factored from the number of individual’s data matrix of 480 collections, with heavy loadings of ≥ 0.70. The sake of convenience and easy understanding, various Factors have been named on the basis of genus/species showed the highest loading on each Factor. The distribution of fish genera according to their loading values in different Factors showed a specific pattern of association and vis-a-vis highlights meaningful interpretations about the ecological habitat characteristics of various genera.