In the first great work on bone histology, tuna (Thunnus and Auxis) were grouped by Kölliker (1859, Proc. Roy. Soc. London) amongst fishes with cellular bone (also thus cited by Parenti 1986, in her Zool. J. Linn. Soc. paper).
This is atypical for higher teleosts, which have acellular bone. In the same publication, Kölliker mentions that the osteocytes are found in the larger scales of Thunnus. In his series of acellular bone of fishes, Moss (1961, Acta Anat.) groups Thunnus with fishes that have acellular bone.
Does anyone know how it really is? Do tuna have cellular bones or not? Do only tuna "corselet" scales consist of cellular, dermal bone (which is strange in itself)?
In which references can I find answers to these questions?
Hi Kenneth:
Interesting, but there must have been, and still remain, some evolutionary pressures for the acellular structural property. Bone growth ceases in humans approximately around the age of 21, but bone repair and remodeling continues throughout life -- as with most animals?
How about this article?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19376962/
Dear Kenneth,
I found same article for you about Fish scale and fish bone. Hopefully it would be useful for you and find your answer in mentioned article.
Kindly regards
Jalil
Hi Nancy and Jalil,
Thanks for the references, but neither of them answer the question. Both papers contain citations of papers in which it should be written that tunas have cellular bones. But in those references this is either not written at all, or a reference is made to Kölliker (1859). And the problem is that Moss (1961) out of the blue presents tunas with acellular bones without any comments whatsoever, and his paper is always mistakenly cited as presenting evidence for tunas with cellular bones. Perhaps this issue has really never been solved so far?
Hi Kenneth, have a look at this paper, it seems that tunas indeed have cellular bone. This could be linked to their high metabolism, but you could also contact Pr. Meunier directly ([email protected]).
Greetings, Philippe
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