Dendritic Arbors in the Goldfish Saccule and Lagena

The goldfish ear has several different types of sensory hair cells (Lanford, Platt, and Popper, 2000) and there is evidence that these hair cells may be innervated by different sized neurons. Recently, Edds-Walton and Popper (2000) used cobaltous-lysine marker to analyze the size and distribution of neurons to the saccule and lagena in goldfish. The arbors on the two end organs have similar morphologies but differ in relative sizes, as seen in the figures below. Saccular arbors tend to be smaller than in the lagena. A regional analysis showed that a wide range of arbor sizes are found along the rostral-caudal axis of the epithelium, although larger arbors are more commonly found at the caudal end.