Ayyildiz and Altin: Age and growth rates of the early life stages of Pagellus erythrinus 
185 
Table t 
Summary of the total lengths in millimeters of young-of-the-year common Pandora 
(Pagellus erythrinus ) collected in the shallow waters (<20 m) off Gokgeada, Turkey, 
from June 2013 through June 2014. The number of specimens (n) and range, mean, 
and standard error of the mean (SE) for total length are provided. 
Month of capture 
n 
Min 
Max 
Mean 
SE 
March 
3 
51 
82 
65.67 
8.99 
April 
1 
110 
110 
110.00 
May 
1 
85 
85 
85.00 
June 
42 
15 
73 
45.33 
1.97 
July 
67 
12 
80 
41.73 
2.37 
August 
34 
25 
70 
47.47 
2.08 
September 
3 
18 
33 
25.33 
4.33 
October 
43 
13 
98 
25.74 
2.93 
November 
66 
16 
86 
32.98 
1.88 
December 
1 
43 
43 
43.00 
Figure 2 
(A) Images of the daily growth rings seen in a polished sagittal otolith of a young-of-the-year common pandora (Pagellus 
erythrinus) collected in November 2013 off Gokfeada, Turkey. (B) Showing the otolith core. This fish was aged at 59 d 
and had a total length of 22 mm. 
software (vers. 5.1; Qlmaging, Surrey, Canada). Oto¬ 
lith length is the longest axis between the anterior and 
posterior otolith edge, and OW is the distance from the 
dorsal to the ventral edge. Otolith radius is the longest 
axis between the core and posterior edge. A linear re¬ 
gression was used to describe the relationship between 
fish TL and otolith morphometric measurements for 
YOY common pandora. 
Distributions of hatching dates of YOY common 
pandora were back-calculated from daily age estimates 
and date of capture. No mortality correction was ap¬ 
plied to the hatching-date distributions (Campana and 
Jones, 1992). 
Results 
A total of 261 YOY common pandora were sampled 
from shallow waters off the island of Gokfeada. Young- 
of-the-year fish ranged in size from 12 to 110 mm TL 
(Table 1). Thirty pairs of sagittal otoliths were rejected 
because they were over ground or cracked, or there 
were discrepancies in daily ring counts among the age 
readers. Daily ages were determined successfully from 
231 otoliths of YOY common pandora that ranged in 
size from 12 to 110 mm TL. We found that the aver¬ 
age length of specimens increased with bottom depth 
(Fig. 3). 
