Zhaohui Xie; Hongbo Zhang; Pengbo Zhang; Qiujie Li & Rui Zhang

The morphological and histological structure of the brains of Bufo gargarizans and Cynops orientalis were observed by anatomy and light microscopy. The results show that the brains of Bufo gargarizans and Cynops orientalis are divided into 5 parts which include the telencephalon, diencephalon, mesencephalon, cerebellum and medulla oblongata. The telencephalon consists of the olfactory bulb and the cerebral hemisphere. The olfactory bulb is developed that has two pairs of olfactory nerve. Bufo gargarizan has a symmetrical oval hemisphere optic lobes; Cynops orientalis only has a spherical optic lobe. The cerebellum is situated behind the optic lobe and closely connected with the myelencephalon. In this paper, the morphological and histological differences between the two species are discussed. The proportion of cerebral hemisphere is gradually increasing, which correlated with a progressive increase in the number of neuronal cell classes, and reflected in behavior complexity.

KEY WORDS: Bufo gargarizans; Cynops orientalis; Brain; Histology; Evolution.

XIE, Z.; ZHANG, H.; ZHANG, P.; LI, Q. & ZHANG, R. Comparative morphology and histology of the brain in Chinese toad (Bufo gargarizans) and Chinese fire-billed newt (Cynops orientalis). Int. J. Morphol., 37(3):1172-1178, 2019.