The evaluation of gnathiid (Crustacea: Isopoda: Gnathidae) parasitism in goldblotch grouper (Epinephelus costae Staindahner, 1878) in the northeastern Mediterranean Sea using the self-organizing map (SOM).

The self-organizing map (SOM), which is widely used in economics and engineering applications, is a type of artificial neural network trained without supervision. SOM is used to represent multidimensional data in much lower dimensional spaces-usually in two dimensions (2D)-while preserving the topological properties of the input space. In this study, 2D maps were produced by using SOM to display the relationship between seasons, length, weight, and isopod infestation of goldblotch grouper (Epinephelus costae Staindahner, 1878).