378 



Fishery Bulletin 104(3) 



2 mm EDTA, pH 7.5). A 100 base-pair (bp) ladder pro- 

 vided molecular weight markers to estimate restriction 

 fragment sizes. Gels were stained with ethidium bro- 

 mide and photographed on an ultraviolet light transil- 

 luminator. Restriction fragments that could not be ac- 

 curately measured from agarose gels were separated on 

 8% polyacrylamide gels and stained with SYBR Green 

 I Nucleic Acid Stain'''^' (Molecular Probes, Eugene, OR) 

 by using a 25-bp ladder for a molecular weight stan- 

 dard. Successful PCR amplification was obtained from 

 24 of the specimens. A key based on restriction site 

 variation (Li et al., 2006) was used in the identification 

 of the rockfish specimens. 



Morphological identification 



Some of the pelagic juveniles included in this study could 

 be identified from body and fin pigment patterns and 

 from gross morphological characteristics, whereas others 



had not yet developed species-specific characters. Meris- 

 tics used to identify rockfish species included counts of 

 dorsal, anal, and pectoral fin rays (Table 2). Key gross 

 morphological characteristics have been described for S. 

 jorrfa;;/ (Moser et al., 1977), S. /ei;/s (Moser et al., 1977), 

 S. goodei (e.g., 35.6-mm-SL specimen illustrated in 

 Sakuma and Laidig [1995J), S. semicinctus (Laidig and 

 Adams, 1991), S. saxicola (e.g., 38.2-mm-SL specimen 

 illustrated in Laidig et al. [1996]), and S. auriculatus 

 (Moser, 1996). However, recently transformed pelagic 

 juveniles of the latter three species do not yet possess 

 distinguishing pigmentation patterns. Those species 

 are included in group 1 in Table 2 and require both 

 morphological and meristic examinations to distinguish 

 them. Although the fin spines of transforming pelagic 

 juveniles are not fully ossified, counts of dorsal-, anal-, 

 and pectoral-fin rays can be made and are useful for 

 separating similarly pigmented species. Body shape, 

 color, and the presence or absence of certain head spines 



