Studies on the chromogenic (morphological) colour change in the fresh water fish Ophiocephalus gachua (Ham.)
Adarsh (Shukla) Dixit
Department of Zoology, Govt. Science College, Gwalior (India)
ABSTRACT
An attempt has been made to know the nature of contract mechanism of the chromogenic response in fresh water fish Ophiocephalus gachua (Ham.). The melanophore population was analysed from observation on prolonged period (30 days) background adaptation of the fish. In this chromogenic response, it is regarded as truely physiological, this is a change both in number of melanophores as well as in the amount of chrome (melamosomes) per cell. The response is resultant of one to incident illumination and one to reflection from the background.