International Journal of Aquaculture, 2017, Vol.7, No.11, 79-82
79
Research Report
Open Access
First Record of Skeletal Deformities in the Indian Catfish
Heteropneustes fossilis
(Bloch, 1794) Obtained from Natural Population in Ganges River, India
Laith A. Jawad
1
, Kyle Luckenbill
2
1 Flat Bush, Manukau, Auckland 2016, New Zealand
2 The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103, USA
Corresponding author Email:
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2017, Vol. 7, No.11 doi:
Received: 25 Apr., 2017
Accepted: 25 Jul., 2017
Published: 05 Aug., 2017
Copyright © 2017
Jawad and Luckenbill, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Jawad L.A., and Luckenbill K., 2017, First record of skeletal deformities in the Indian catfish
Heteropneustes fossilis
(Bloch, 1794) obtained from natural
population in Ganges River, India, International Journal of Aquaculture, 7(11): 79-82 (doi:
Abstract
The Indian catfish,
H. fossilis
, is found throughout south and Southeast Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, Laos,
Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Abnormal calcification and other minor deformities were noticed in a specimen
of
Heteropneustes fossilis
. Neural spines deformities are reported in Indian catfish
Heteropneustes fossilis
collected from Ganges
River, India. The neural spines of both abdominal and haemal vertebrae were involved in these abnormalities. In addition, a minor
anomaly was also noticed in the neural and haemal spines of the 36
th
– 44
th
caudal vertebrae. Possible causes such as genetic and
epigenetic factors may be implicated in this anomaly.
Keywords
Vertebral column; Deformity; Ganges River; Neural spine
1 Introduction
With the presence of skeletal deformities that the fish may have during their early life history, a natural
development of different parts of the fish cannot be attained. In turn, such anomalies can affect the morphology,
growth and survival of the fish (Bogutskaya et al., 2011). In the wild, such deformities are relatively rare (Gavaia
et al., 2009) and some abnormalities are considered so severe that they affect the fitness of the fishes, while others
may be slight and not critical to survival (Ershov, 2008).
The Indian catfish,
H. fossilis
, is found throughout south and Southeast Asian countries including Bangladesh,
India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand (Talwar and Jhingran, 1991). In some parts of the
world, i.e., Iraq, it has been introduced in an aim to control of the snail
Bulinus truncatus
, the vector for the
human parasite causing schistosomiasis (Jawad, 2015), but which proved to be ineffectual (Jawad, 2003).
Detecting skeletal deformities in fishes are important from the point of view of monitoring the environment.
Skeletal abnormalities in
H. fossilis
were reported from individuals subjected to cold shock to induce triploidy
(Tiwary and Ray, 2004). Other than this report, there is no information on record about the skeletal deformities in
H. fossilis
. Therefore, the present study is considered the first to document the description of dorsal fin anomaly in
the Indian catfish collected from Ganges River, India.
2 Materials and Methods
During the osteological study on specimens of
H. fossilis
using radiographs of specimens deposited at the
ichthyological collection of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia, one specimen
with catalogue no. ANSP 178663 has shown multiple skeletal deformities. Although the specimen was obtained
from aquarium shop at Bangkok, it was originally collected from the Ganges River, India. The specimen was
obtained by M.H. Sabaj and M. Hardman on 2
nd
February 2001. The normal and abnormal fish specimens were
123 and 137 mm in total length (TL) respectively. Radiograph of a normal specimen (ANSP 123097) was
obtained to determine the extent of the deformity. Radiographs were used to describe the skeletal deformities. In
the process, the parts of the vertebrae were described in details.
