Studies on the leptocephali of Bombay waters III. The Metamorphosing Stages of Uroconger lepturus (Richardson)

Abstract

The leptocephalus of Uroconger Iepturus was first described by Nair in 1946 and its occurrence was later recorded from the Gulf of Mannar (Nair, 1948). The present collection consists of several leptocephali and elvers of different sizes, the majority of which was collected from Versova (vide Introduction, Nair and Mohamed, 1960). All the stages described here were taken from the collection made on the 9th January 1954. Most of the larvae in the collection were edentulous and showed high variation in the preanal myotome number and the latter character was also found to vary in the few toothed larvae present in the collection.