Lingual morphology of Pygoderma bilabiatum: Anatomy and Histology

MOLLERACH M. I., S. MANGIONE,R. M. BARQUEZ

Mendoza

Congreso; IMC-10 International Mammalogical Congress; 2009

International Federation of Mammalogists

Pygoderma bilabiatum is a bat of the family Phyllostomidae scarcely known with respect to its biology and anatomy. In this work acontribution to the knowledge of the anatomy of the tongue is presented, showing macro and microanatomy characters. Histologicaltechniques were used under optical microscopy to infer correlations between morphology and the type of food preferred by thisspecies. At the tip of tongue fungiform papillae with gustative corpuscles are located. The dorsal surface has a plane keratinizedstratified epithelium, and mechanical filiform papillae with different degrees of keratinization. These papillae have a single “keratinizationcenter” unlike other species of bats. At the anterior end of the tongue there is a large papilla of that kind. In the posterior third thereare a small number of circumvallate and filiform papillae with taste corpuscles associated to them. Amongst the muscles locatedbeneath the papillae of the posterior region, there is a prominent lymphocytic infiltration and at the dorsal posterior region there is anervous ganglion and a lymphatic tonsil. In the posterior region, between the muscles, serous glands were observed, which reactwith PAS. The dorsal musculature is placed laterally along the body of the tongue. At the medial region there are several transversaland some dorsoventral fascicles. The ventral region is coated by keratinized plane stratified epithelium, being remarkable the presenceif a hyper-keratinized area that was not observed in any other species of bat. The tongue of this species do not show a specializedmuscular morphology, and the most outstanding details are the hyper-keratinized area of the ventral epithelium, and the presencechemical sensors at the tip of the tongue.