Laith A. Jawad¹ , Kyle Luckenbill²

1 Flat Bush, Manukau, Auckland 2016, New Zealand
2 The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103, USA
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 11   doi: 10.5376/ija.2017.07.0011
Received: 25 Apr., 2017    Accepted: 25 Jul., 2017    Published: 05 Aug., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Jawad L.A., and Luckenbill K., 2017, First record of skeletal deformities in the Indian catfish Heteropneustes fossilis (Bloch, 1794) obtained from natural population in Ganges River, India, International Journal of Aquaculture, 7(11): 79-82 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2017.07.0011)

The Indian catfish, H. fossilis, is found throughout south and Southeast Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Abnormal calcification and other minor deformities were noticed in a specimen of Heteropneustes fossilis. Neural spines deformities are reported in Indian catfish Heteropneustes fossilis collected from Ganges River, India. The neural spines of both abdominal and haemal vertebrae were involved in these abnormalities. In addition, a minor anomaly was also noticed in the neural and haemal spines of the 36^th – 44^th caudal vertebrae. Possible causes such as genetic and epigenetic factors may be implicated in this anomaly.

Vertebral column; Deformity; Ganges River; Neural spine