Laith A. Jawad¹ , L. Al-Hassani²

1. Manukau, Auckland, New Zealand
2. Marine Science and Fisheries Centre, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Wealth, P.O. Box 427, Postal Code 100, Muscat, Oman
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2014, Vol. 4, No. 33   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0033
Received: 01 Mar., 2014    Accepted: 02 Apr., 2014    Published: 27 Apr., 2014

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 and Al-Hassani, 2014, Morphological Study of the Vertebral Column of the Ponyfish Leiognathus equulus (Family: Leiognathidae) Collected from the Sea of Oman, International Journal of Marine Science, Vol.4, No.33 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0033)

Based on a morphometric study, Leiognathus equulus was divided into five morphologically distinct regions: anterior postcranial, posterior postcranial, anterior middle region, posterior middle region, and ural. The length, height, width and vertebral central width of the successive vertebrae allow showing the characteristic features of the vertebral profiles to be drawn. Differences in vertebral length present in different regions of the vertebral column show regionalization in this structure. These morphological descriptive parameters express a morphotype that seems to have a functional link with the thunniform mode of swimming of L. equulus. Therefore the present work aims to study the biometry of the vertebral column of L. equulus and contribute to other morpho-functional data available for teleost species.

Vertebral column; Morphology; Regionalization; Ponyfish; Leiognathus equulus; Sea of Oman