While studying M. electricus, my co-author and I were observed that, the skull of M. electricus was consisted of both bones and cartilage, as the frontal, parietal,
supraoccipital, postparietal, sphenotic and pterootic were remained cartilages in mature fish (J. Morphol. Sci., 2014, vol. 31, no. 3, p. 162-170). I wonder is this observed by researchers worked on other electric fishes, as we suggested that, these cartilage may play a role in protecting the electric fish brain from electric shocking.
Dear Eman,
I am curious about this. You write that several cranial bones remained as cartilages in mature individuals of M. electricus. For instance, frontal and parietal. However, those are dermal, they are not chondral bones . Could it be possible that there was a problem in the preparation of the specimens and some bones were over stained? Alcian blue can stain even dermal bones when the specimens have been exposed a little longer to the colorant.
With best wishes,
Gloria
Dear Gloria, your note is reasonable, if you have an article describing embryo-genesis of skull in M. electrics, kindly send it to me. I did not think that the roof of skull was over-stained. However, I have little success to find articles about developing of bones in M. electrics, so we could not confirm their chondral origin. In my opinion, each fish skull is a separate puzzle and nothing stable. I am trying to test our findings by reviewing other researches as it is hard to study the fish embryo-genesis. Thank you very much for your notes.
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