332 



Fishery Bulletin 102(2) 



from the tip of the Alaska Peninsula west and north into 

 the Bering Sea. 



Results 



Color 



Body color in life and in preservation differs consistently 

 between S. ciliatus and S. variabilis (Fig. 1; see detailed 

 description below). In life, S. ciliatus is uniformly bluish- 

 black to gray, with slight gradual lightening on the belly; 

 the peritoneum is invariably jet black. In contrast, S. 

 variabilis varies in background color from golden yellow 

 to greenish brown to dark gray, with a distinct break 

 between the darker dorsum and the invariably white to 

 pink ventrum, particularly at the base of the anal fin; the 

 peritoneum is gray to black. In S. variabilis preserved for 

 up to 30 years, the distinct break along the ventrum is 

 retained and differs from the uniformly dark preserved 

 color of S. ciliatus. This combination of characteristic 

 body and peritoneum color was used initially to identify in- 

 dividuals as either S. ciliatus or S. variabilis as the basis 

 for univariate statistical analyses. 



Meristic characters 



Lateral-line pore and gill-raker counts differed signifi- 

 cantly between S. ciliatus and S. variabilis from all depths 

 and regions, S. ciliatus having a lower range and mode of 

 counts (Tables 1-3). In shallow water, only lateral-line 

 pore counts showed significant differences (Table 4). 



Slight clinal variation was evident for lateral-line pores 

 in S. ciliatus between southeast Alaska collections and 

 northern Gulf of Alaska material (Table 2). In the PCA, 

 counts of lateral-line pores, gill rakers, and pectoral-fin 

 rays were most heavily loaded along the first PC axis, 

 confirming that S. ciliatus has typically lower lateral-line 

 pore and gill-raker counts and tends to have a higher pec- 

 toral-fin ray count (Tables 1-3, 5; Fig. 3B). 



Morphometric characters 



Among morphometric characters meeting statistical 

 assumptions for ANOVA or ANCOVA, head length, 

 interorbital width, suborbital depth, lower-jaw length, 

 gill-raker length, body thickness, pectoral-fin base width, 

 predorsal length, and soft-dorsal-fin-base length differed 

 significantly between S. ciliatus and S. variabilis across 

 all depths and regions (Table 1). Between shallow-water 

 S. ciliatus and S. variabilis, all the above characters, 

 except head length, interorbital width, and predorsal 

 length, differed significantly (Table 4). No significant dif- 

 ferences were found in analyses within species by depth 

 or sex. 



In the PCA for specimens collected across all regions 

 and depths, clusters of S. ciliatus and S. variabilis showed 

 broad overlap and only slight discrimination among indi- 

 viduals along the PC2 axis (Fig. 3A). Principal component 

 2, the primary shape component, described 1.8% of the 

 total variation, and PCI, the size component having all 

 loadings positive, described 96.4 r r of the variation. Char- 

 acters loading most heavily along the PC2 axis included 

 suborbital depth, gill-raker length, orbit length, body 



