Large retinal ganglion cells that form independent, regular mosaics in the bufonoid frogs Bufo marinus and Litoria moorei

K.M. SHAMIM, P. TÓTH, D.L. BECKER, J.E. COOK
1999 Visual Neuroscience  
Population-based methods were used to study labeled retinal ganglion cells from the cane toad Bufo marinus and the treefrog Litoria moorei, two visually competent bufonoid neobatrachians with contrasting habitats. In both, cells with large somata and thick dendrites formed distinct types with independent mosaics. The a a , a ab , and a c mosaics of Bufo in all major respects resembled those of ranids, studied previously, and could be provisionally matched to the same functional classes. As in
more » ... her frogs, some a a cells were displaced and many a-cells of all types were asymmetric, but within each type all variants belonged to one mosaic. Nearest-neighbor analyses and spatial correlograms confirmed that all three mosaics were regular and independent. In Litoria, monostratified a a cells were not found. Instead, two bistratified types were present, distinguished individually by soma size and dendritic caliber and collectively by membership of independent mosaics: the larger (;0.8% of all ganglion cells) was termed a1 ab and the smaller (;2.2%) a2 ab . An a c cell type was also present, although too inconstantly labeled for mosaic analysis. Nearest-neighbor analyses and spatial correlograms confirmed that the two a ab mosaics were regular and independent. Densities, proportions, soma sizes, and mosaic statistics are tabulated for each species. The emergence of a consensus pattern of a-cell types in fishes and frogs, from which this treefrog partly diverges, offers new possibilities for studying correlations between function, phylogeny, ecology, and neuronal form.
doi:10.1017/s0952523899165064 pmid:10580722 fatcat:w2mqcd6zczfbbdgpkkhboefsjm