Description of Cochlear Morphology and Hair Cell Variation in the Beluga Whale
| Autor: | Maria Morell, Cassandra D. Girdlestone, Marina Piscitelli-Doshkov, Robert E. Shadwick, Sonja K. Ostertag |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
inner ear
cochlea Beluga Environmental engineering odontocetes otorhinolaryngologic diseases medicine beluga (delphinapterus leucas) organ of corti GE1-350 Inner ear Cochlea General Environmental Science Stapes biology Anatomy TA170-171 biology.organism_classification Apex (geometry) Environmental sciences medicine.anatomical_structure Organ of Corti General Earth and Planetary Sciences Beluga Whale sense organs Hair cell General Agricultural and Biological Sciences |
| Zdroj: | Arctic Science, Vol 4, Iss 3, Pp 279-291 (2018) |
| ISSN: | 2368-7460 |
| DOI: | 10.1139/as-2017-0031 |
| Popis: | Environmental change and decreased ice cover in the Arctic make new areas accessible to humans and animals. It is important to understand how these changes impact marine mammals, such as beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas Pallas, 1776). Hearing is crucial in the daily lives of cetaceans. Consequently, we need normal baselines to further understand how anthropogenic noise affects these animals. Relatively little is known about the inner ear morphology of belugas, particularly the organ of Corti, or hearing organ, found within the cochlea. The base of the cochlea encodes for high-frequency sounds, while low frequencies are detected in the apex. We showed differences between the apex, or centremost point of the cochlea, and the base, the region closest to the stapes. Our results showed that average outer hair cell density changed from 148 cells/mm in the apex to 117 cells/mm in the base. Cell width varied between the two regions, from 5.8 µm in the apex to 8.4 µm in the base. These results revealed variation throughout the cochlea, and thus the need to understand the basic morphology, to give further insight on hearing function in belugas and allow us to recognize damage if or when we find it. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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