Shaoquan Meng; Yongjian Bei; Guifen Li; Ronghui Lu; Baomin Qi & Defeng Wu

SUMMARY: The gills of Ichthyophis bannanicus have yet to be investigated. This paper describes the external morphological features of the gills of mature I. bannanicus embryos exhibiting three pairs of gills on their neck region. Each gill is composed of an axis and filaments. In newly released embryos, the filaments and the axis form at approximately 90° relative to each other; eventually, this angle decreases and the color of the gill fades. The filaments on the axis are arranged alternately, and their spacing varies. The mid-pair of gills is significantly longer by nearly twofold than the front and rear pairs. Likewise, the lengths of the front and rear pairs of gills are not significantly different (P >0.05); for the same pair of gills, the lengths of the left and right parts are not significantly different (P >0.05). The number of filaments is greater in the mid-pair of gills than in the front and rear pairs (P <0.05); the number of filaments in the front pair is not significantly different from that of the rear pair (P >0.05); the number of filaments in the left part does not significantly differ from that of the right parts (P >0.05). Results showed that the gills of I. bannanicus embryo are more similar to those of other species in Ichthyophiidae than to those of species in other families.

KEY WORDS: Amphibia; Caecilian; External gill; Morphology.

MENG, S.; BEI, Y.; LI, G.; LU, R.; QI, B. & WU, D. External morphological features of the gills of Ichthyophis bannanicus embryo (Amphibia, Gymnophiona). Int. J. Morphol., 34(1):237-243, 2016.