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XV.—Development and Probable Evolution of the Suctorial Disc in the Tadpoles of Rana afghana Günther*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

Sunder Lal Hora
Affiliation:
Zoological Survey of India.

Extract

The remarkable and close parallelism exhibited by the suctorial disc of the fish Garra and of certain tadpoles belonging to frogs of the section Rana formosa of Rana was pointed out by the late Dr Annandale and myself in 1922. Evidence was then adduced to show that such structures have come into existence through a gradual accumulation of small changes, which probably originated in direct response to the increasing swiftness of the currents as the animals invaded higher and higher levels of torrential streams. The probable evolution and the development of the disc of Garra have been described already (Hora, 1921, pp. 639–643); whereas the peculiar structure of the disc in the tadpoles has hitherto been known only in its fully-formed condition. It seemed probable that, with the discovery of the earlier stages in the development of the disc, the line of evolution of the sucker would prove to be similar to that of the sucking disc of the fishes of the genus Garra (Hora, 1930, p. 241). The observations described hereafter confirm this view.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1933

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References

Annandale, N., and Hora, S. L., 1922. “Parallel Evolution in the Fish and Tadpoles of Mountain Torrents,” Rec. Ind. Mus., vol. xxiv, pp. 505509.Google Scholar
Hora, S. L., 1921. “Indian Cyprinoid Fishes belonging to the genus Garra,” Rec. Ind. Mus., vol. xxii, pp. 639643.Google Scholar
Hora, S. L., 1930. “Ecology, Bionomics, and Evolution of the Torrential Fauna,” Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond., vol. ccxviii, pp. 241243.Google Scholar