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International Journal of Marine Science 2014, Vol.4, No.33
http://ijms.biopublisher.ca
1
A Letter Open Access
Morphological Study of the Vertebral Column of the Ponyfish
Leiognathus
equulus
(Family: Leiognathidae) Collected from the Sea of Oman
L. A. Jawad
1
, L. Al-Hassani
2
1. Manukau, Auckland, New Zealand
2. Marine Science and Fisheries Centre, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Wealth, P.O. Box 427, Postal Code 100, Muscat, Oman
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science, 2014, Vol.4, No.33 doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0033
Received: 01 Mar., 2014
Accepted: 02 Apr., 2014
Published: 27 May, 2014
Copyright
©
2014 Jawad and Al-Hassani, 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 and Al-Hassani, 2014, Morphological Study of the Vertebral Column of the Ponyfish
Leiognathus equulus
(Family: Leiognathidae) Collected from the
Sea of Oman, International Journal of Marine Science, Vol.4, No.33 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0033)
Abstract
Based on a morphometric study,
Leiognathus equulus
was divided into five morphologically distinct regions: anterior
postcranial, posterior postcranial, anterior middle region, posterior middle region, and ural. The length, height, width and vertebral
central width of the successive vertebrae allow showing the characteristic features of the vertebral profiles to be drawn. Differences
in vertebral length present in different regions of the vertebral column show regionalization in this structure. These morphological
descriptive parameters express a morphotype that seems to have a functional link with the thunniform mode of swimming of
L.
equulus
. Therefore the present work aims to study the biometry of the vertebral column of
L. equulus
and contribute to other
morpho-functional data available for teleost species.
Keywords
Vertebral column; Morphology; Regionalization; Ponyfish;
Leiognathus equulus
; Sea of Oman
Introduction
The study of the skeletal characters of this species has
not been receiving considerable attention so far.
Vertebrates showed variation in the degree of
regionalization of the vertebral column. Such
differences in the morphology of vertebrae of different
regions of vertebral column can be revealed by
biometrical studies (Kubo and Asano, 1987, 1990,
Desse et al., 1989). The vertebral column of
actinopterygian fishes has two basic regions: the
pre-anal abdominal region and post-anal caudal region
(Grande and Bemis, 1998) with remarked diversity in
vertebral form within these regions (Ford, 1937,
Pietsch, 1978, Grande and Bemis, 1998, Bemis and
Forey, 2001). The abdominal region may include,
from anterior to posterior, occipital vertebrae that are
incorporated into the skull through ontogeny, middle
region vertebrae that are highly modified, and
vertebrae that generally bear abdominal ribs (Desse et
al., 1989). The ural region includes vertebrae that bear
haemal spines and ural vertebrae that bear hypurals.
The locomotory function is linked to the structure of
the vertebrae in each region of the vertebral column
(Ramzu et al., 1992).
Among the important mechanical tasks that the
vertebral column gets involved in is the fish
locomotion (Learm, 1976, Lindsey, 1978, Weihs,
1989). During the developmental stages, this
structure is subjected to different types of biological
strains which seem to be expressed by vertebral
morphological charactristics (Kubo and Asano, 1987,
1990, Desse et al., 1989). Due to the strong
anatomical and functional relationship with the
trunco-caudal musculature (Le Danois, 1958, Lindsey,
1978, Vronskii and Nikolaitchouk, 1989) and since the
vertebral column is an important structure in
locomotion, it is interesting to study its morphology
and to make links between this morphology and the
locomotion.
The aim of the present work is to study the biometry
of the vertebral column of the common ponyfish,
L.
equulus
collected from the Sea of Oman as there is no
such information is available in the literature for this
species.
1 Materials and Methods
On 31 May 2011 and during the ichthyological survey
on the fish fauna in the vicinity of Muscat City, Sea of