Abstract
AMONG a number of interesting contributions to the silver jubilee number of The Aquarist and Pondkeeper (May 1943), a paper on the breeding habits of the bitterling (Rhodeus amarus) is noteworthy. The author, the well-known fish photographer, W. S. Pitt, brings together a number of contradictory accounts of the manner in which the female deposits her eggs in the freshwater mussel, where they afterwards undergo development. It is generally believed that the long ovipositor is inserted into the mussel ; but his own observations, and those of his brother, suggest that this is not so. So far as they could see, the bitterlmg merely strikes the siphon of the mussel with the part of her body immediately in front of the ovipositor, the lattter trailing loosely behind, being neither inserted into the mussel nor sucked in by it. The late J. R. Norman, in a letter to Pitt, described a wide-lipped tube at the base of the long, narrow ovipositor and showed that it is possible for the egg to be shed through either tube. Some observers, including in recent years L. H. Bretschneider and J. J. D. de Witt, have insisted that the long ovipositor is inserted into the siphon and that through it the egg is passed. It appears that the act of deposition occurs so quickly that details are difficult to follow, and the act therefore seems to be a suitable subject for investigation with a cine-camera in the hands of an expert photographer and aquarist possessed of much patience. Perhaps Mr. Pitt himself will undertake the task.
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Spawning Act of the Bitterling. Nature 164, 735 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164735d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164735d0