Detalle de: Can geometric morphometrics work for species clusterization on the armored catfish Hypostomus Lacépède, 1803 (Siluriformes Loricariidae)?

Studies with geometric morphometrics are efficient to clusterize and delimitate fish species.The armored catfish family (Loricariidae) is the second with more species and the Hypostomus genus can be highlighted as the most representative.By that, we present a geometric morphometric analysis in seven Hypostomus species from Paranaíba river basin (Brazil), testing which view for this technique were able to clusterize more efficiently the species.We found that lateral, frontal and ventral views were capable to form species-clusters with few overlaps in the PCA analysis.With the dorsal view overlapping all species, except for Hypostomus nigromaculatus, we consider that this view cannot be used for the geometric morphometric analysis.Hypostomus presents a complex taxonomy, with several cryptic species, and geometric morphometrics can be used as a complementary tool on Hypostomus taxonomy.Therefore, further analyses were required to evaluate the contribution of each landmark in species clusterization.