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¹ Annamalai University, Faculty of Marine Sciences, Centre of Advanced study in Marine biology, Parangipettai,608502, Tamil Nadu, India DOI : 10.4194/1303-2712-v13_2_14 Viewed : 3994 - Downloaded : 3400 Species delineation among three genera and ten species of mullets (Family : Mugilidae) (Liza macrolepis, Liza parsia, Liza planiceps, Liza subviridis, Liza tade, Liza vaigiensis, Mugil cephalus, Valamugil cunnesius, Valamugil seheli, Valamugil speigleri) occurring in Parangipettai coastal waters was attempted using morphological characters and by sequencing the partial mitochondrial Cytochrome C Oxidase subunit I gene. The first three principal components (PCA) explained 90.82 % of the total variation in the 25 morphometric characters. Characters with high loadings (≥ 0.8) in the first component such as snout to I dorsal, snout to II dorsal, snout to anal, standard length, fork length and total length were selected for delineating all the 10 species using Canonical Analysis of Principal Coordinates (CAP). In spite of its robustness CAP failed to separate the species and there was high overlapping. On the contrary, all the 10 species could be clearly differentiated with COI gene sequences. While COI was found to be good for species level identification, other markers have to be used in conjunction with COI to study the phylogeny and to know the evolutionary history of mugilids. Keywords : Mullets, CAP, COI, morphometry, species delineation