The Ovary as an Indicator of the Spawning Period in Fishes

Abstract

Accounts of the ovarian development of the eggs of fishes have been given by Kisselevitch (1923). Mayenne (1927), and recently by Hickling (1930) and Raitt (1933). They have concluded that in the ovary of the adult fish there is a general egg-stock of small eggs, yolkless and transparent in fresh material, and with deeply staining cytoplasm in fixed and stained material. From this egg-stock a quota is withdrawn each year to be matured and finally spawned, and to this egg-stock a fresh batch is added each year by the development of oocytes present beneath the surface of the ovigerous lamellæ, the minimum period of development being two seasons. It has occurred to us that measurements of the diameters of eggs, in ovaries well advanced towards spawning, may give evidence of the duration of spawning in a fish of which the spawning habits are unknown. For where the spawning period is short and definite, the batch of transparent yolkless small eggs, destined to mature and be spawned, will be withdrawn from the general egg-stock in a single group, sharply distinguishable, at least in the later stages of maturation, from the stock of small eggs from which it was derived. But when the spawning period is long and indefinite, the withdrawal of eggs from the egg-stock, to undergo maturation, will be a continuous process, and there will be no sharp separation between the general egg-stock and the maturing eggs. These will pass continuously one into the other. We have tested this hypothesis with four species of fish of known spawning habits.