. California fish and game. Fisheries -- California; Game and game-birds -- California; Fishes -- California; Animal Population Groups; Pêches; Gibier; Poissons. 224 CALIFORNIA FISH AND CAME. FIGURE 2. Embryos removed from abnormally developed Damalichthys vacca. The radiograph of the stubby D. vacca revealed numerous vertebral fusions along the spinal column, particularly in the caudal one-half, and malformed neural and hemal spines along the entire column (Figure 1). Miller and Lea (1972) list the range of vertebrae in D. vacca as 34 to 39. The normally devel- oped specimen in the radiograph
. California fish and game. Fisheries -- California; Game and game-birds -- California; Fishes -- California; Animal Population Groups; Pêches; Gibier; Poissons. 224 CALIFORNIA FISH AND CAME. FIGURE 2. Embryos removed from abnormally developed Damalichthys vacca. The radiograph of the stubby D. vacca revealed numerous vertebral fusions along the spinal column, particularly in the caudal one-half, and malformed neural and hemal spines along the entire column (Figure 1). Miller and Lea (1972) list the range of vertebrae in D. vacca as 34 to 39. The normally devel- oped specimen in the radiograph had 38 vertebrae while the abnormally devel- oped specimen appeared to have 33 to 35 (Figure 1). No lateral or dorso-ventral curvature was evident. The embryos exhibited no skeletal deformities; although one had been damaged in its removal from the parent (Figure 2). Skeletal anomalies have been reported for many species of fish (Dawson 1964, 1966, 1971, 1975) but to my knowledge none have been reported for D. vacca. The possible environmental or genetic causes of the spinal column de- formity observed in D. vacca are too numerous to discuss here and I refer the reader to Hickey (1972) for appropriate treatment of that topic. However, I believe that the lack of spinal column deformity in the embryos strongly suggests that the cause of the abnormal condition in the parent is environmental in nature. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Robert J. Lavenberg of The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County for assistance in production of the radiographs. Department of Fish and Game biologists Peter L. Haaker and Eric Knaggs are thanked for providing helpful Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original California. Dept. of Fish and Game; California. Fish and Game Commission; California. Division
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