The analysis of shape is a fundamental part of most biological researches. The geometrical morphometrics offer promising perspectives to appraise morphological variations among organisms and useful for the study of systematics and evolution. A total of 215 samples of Puntius spp were caught during the sampling period (2007-2010). Samples were identified to the species level. Landmark-based geometric morphometric methods were used to record x and y coordinates of 16 homologous landmarks and captured information of the body shape. Differences due to size, orientation and position were removed by generalized procrustes analysis. After superimposition, the data were converted into principal warps using the thin plate spline model. Shape differences analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed 2 distinct groups. Results from canonical variate Analyses (CVA) showed great differences among species. The assignment of individual specimens to the correct species revealed that all species were well separated in morphospace. The first two canonical variate axes (cv1 and cv2) explained 49.5% and 32.08% of the variance among the species The dendrogram of the ten species constructed by hierarchical clustering of single linkage (nearest neighbor) by using Euclidean distance showed 2 main clades, i.e. Clade I (P. schwanenfeldii, P. bulu, P. gonionotus, and P. daruphani) and Clade 2 (P. fasciatus, P. hexazona, P. tetrazona, P. lateristriga, P. binotatus and P. everetti). The results agree with our molecular study on Puntius.

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