Gills Structural Characterization of Liza aurata

Mullets have a worldwide distribution and inhabit tropical and temperate seas, a few spend their lives in freshwater Golden grey mullet, usually lives inshore, enters lagoons and estuaries, and rarely moves into freshwater. Additionally, it is widely distributed in numerous seas In this study 20 healthy juvenile specimens of 12‰ water of Caspian Sea L. aurata with similar size (Body weight between 3.1cm and 1.5–2g) were caught by beach seining in the southern coast of the Caspian (June 2005). Fish were anaesthetized in a clove extract solution, killed and then gills were immediately removed, fixed in Bouin s fluid and then processed for embedding in paraffin wax. For light microscopy, gills were fixed in bouin s fluid for 24h, dehydrated in graded series of ethanols and paraffin embedded; tissue sections (4 µm) were stained using Haematoxylin & Eosin results showed that a row of leaf-like lamellae occurs on both sides of each filament. Longitudinal sections revealed bilaterally symmetrical lamellae branching from the central axis of the filament, consisting mainly of capillaries and erythrocytes. A pluristratifed epithelium covered the filament and monostratified epithelium covered the lamellae. Gills rakers covered with stratified epithelium that consists of variable number of cell layers. Results showed that general organization of the gills of juvenile Golden grey mullet specimens was similar it that previously described in different species of teleost.

Keywords:

Liza aurata , Branch , Structure