An attempt to fatigue the melanophore system in Fundulus and a consideration of lag in melanophore responses

✍ Scribed by Parker, George Howard ;Brower, Helen Porter

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1937
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 809 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0095-9898
• DOI: 10.1002/jcp.1030090303

✦ Synopsis

ONE FIQURE

If the blanching and the darkening of such a fish as Fundulus are due to the action on its melanophores of a concentrating neurohumor from its concentrating nerve fibers and of a dispersing one from the opposing fibers, it might be possible by appropriate stimulation to exhaust one or other of these sources of controlling materials and thus to set the system in a novel state of activity. No one so far as we are aware has heretofore attempted to test a chromatophoral system in this way. We have, therefore, undertaken this test on the common killifish, Fundulus heteroclitus, whose color responses appeared to us favorable for this investigation and with whose general activities we were already familiar. The work was done at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, to the director and assistants of which we are under great obligations. Fundulus heteroclitus, the common killifish, exhibits a wellmarked change in tint from pale to dark and the reverse. With the stock of fishes at our disposal at Woods Hole during the summer these changes proved to occur from pale to dark in a little less than a minute and from dark to pale in a, little 315