2. Behavioral Biology TALKS - Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft

inferior chamber of the accessory cavity encloses a second olfactory system, the
vomeronasal organ. Main cavity and accessory cavity are usually connected via a slitlike
longitudinal opening, which is called infundibulum in the anterior part of the
nose and in caudal direction becomes the so called isthmus.
Surprisingly, in the mantellids we have investigated so far, most parts of this slit no
longer form an opening, but are grown together. Only a small rostral area of the
infundibulum maintains the spatial connection between the two parts of the nasal
cavity.
The functional background of this anatomical exception may be associated with the
transfer of olfactory stimuli into the vomeronasal organ; previous studies indicated
that the isthmus of other frogs can be occluded temporarily by a vascular pumping
mechanism. The deviant anatomy of the nasal cavity observed in mantellids might be
related to the presence in many of these frogs of so-called femoral glands that are
assumed to produce volatile pheromones.
����221 Carolin Wittmer
Tales from the crypt: Lectin histochemical study of a potential vomeronasal organ
in lungfish
Authors: Carolin Wittmer 1 , Christine Nowack 1
Affiliation: 1 WG Functional Vertebrate AnatomyDepartment of Zoology/
Developmental Biology, University of Kassel
Lungfish represent the closest living relatives of tetrapods within the group of fish,
thus they play an important role in the reconstruction of land vertebrate evolution.
Also with regard to their olfactory organ they have a special position within the group
of fish: Several authors have observed components of a vomeronasal organ which in
addition to the main olfactory organ may be present within their olfactory system.
The descriptions of these potential vomeronasal organs, however, differ greatly from
each other, regarding their structures and locations.
In the lungfish Protopterus epithelial crypts, located between the olfactory lamellae,
were proclaimed as a primordial segmented vomeronasal organ. On the contrary,
such crypts were previously interpreted as Bowman's glands. Therefore, an
unambiguous classification of these structures is still missing.
In the present approach, lectin histochemistry was used to investigate the mentioned
epithelial crypts in the olfactory organ of the lungfish species Protopterus annectens
and Lepidosiren paradoxa in order to gain additional information about these
potential vomeronasal structures.
����221 Sigrid Kress
The Correlation of Immediate Early Gene (egr1/c-fos) expression and tyrosine
hydroxylase expression in zebrafish brains
Authors: Sigrid Kress, Mario Wullimann
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