Full Length Research Paper

Length-weight relationship of largescale mullet, Liza macrolepis (Smith, 1846), off the southwestern coast of Taiwan

Wu-Shan Chu^1,2*, Yi-You Hou^3# , Yih-Tsong Ueng^4#, and Jiang-Ping Wang^1,2

¹Department of Life Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.

²Marine Biology and Cetacean Research Center, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.

³Department of Electrical Engineering, Far East University, Tainan 744, Taiwan.

⁴Department of Environmental Engineering, Kun-Shan University, Tainan 710, Taiwan.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: bowin1109@gmail.com. Tel: +886-6-2840733. Fax: +886-6-2840732.

#These authors contributed equally to this work

Accepted 19 December, 2011

   Abstract

Liza macrolepis inhabits marine, estuarine, and fresh water throughout most tropical and temperate regions of the world. L. macrolepis were collected using samples caught by set net in the southwestern of Taiwan in this study. Length-weight and length-length, fork (FL), standard (SL), and total (TL) lengths relationships are derived, respectively. The relationships between lengths are all significantly linear (p < 0.001), the b value in the length-weight relationship for this value is significantly lower than 3 in the winter (p < 0.001), when the temporal changes are taken into account, indicating that only the sampling time affected the growth pattern of L. macrolepis. Growth is isometric in the spring, summer fall and, but it is negative and allometric in the winter.

Key words: Liza macrolepis, Length-Weight relationship (LWR), growth.