Histological study on intersexual gonads observed in wild tiger puffer, Takifugu rubripes
1997
Suzuki, N. (Nansei National Fisheries Research Inst., Ono, Hiroshima (Japan))
Intersexual gonads of wild tiger puffer, Takifugu rubripes (Temminck et Schlegel), which had body weights of 346 g (an immature fish) and 7,012 g (a mature fish) were studied using histological and morphological criteria. These puffers were caught by ling lines at Hotojima Island, Bungo channel, on January 30, 1996 and in the Japan Sea off Yamaguchi prefecture, on February 4, 1996, respectively. The hermaphrodite immature fish found out of 209 specimens examined. The hermaphrodite one externally had small-sized testis-like organs concentrated on the surface of the tips of the ovaries. While the hermaphrodite gonad of the mature puffer was externally separated by thin membranes into four parts of ovary-like and testis-like organs, the organs histologically were intermingled. Most of the ovary-like organ consisted of ova in the germinal vesicle stage, and decaying ova were also found. But spermatocytogenesis in the testis-like organ was present at the secondaryspermatocytal stage and the spermatozoa were indistinct. Hypertrophied intermuscular connective tissue on the gonadal membrane and the primodial germ cells found in the tissue occurred characteristically in both the immature and mature hermaphrodite gonads. Whether the hermaphrodite gonads found in wild puffers differentiated as gonadal germ cells irrespective of their genetic sex or is not clear, but the intersexual gonads were concluded as an abnormal hermaphroditism according to the histological phase
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