Mohi Uddin; Abdullah Al Faruq; Md Shahriar Hasan Sohel; Yasushi Imamoto & Mohammad Lutfur Rahman

The distribution of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) was observed in the retinal wholemount of native chicken (Gallus gallus domestricus) of Bangladesh by using light microscopy. We considered five different anatomic regions (central, nasal, temporal, dorsal, and ventral) of Nissl stained wholemount, and the RGCs were counted, plotted, and measured accordingly. The average area of the retina was 431.75 mm2 while the total number of ganglion cells was 2124431 on average. Only the central area of the retina was the peak density (10400 cells/mm2) area, signifying the acute visual area, whilst the maximum spatial resolving power was 11 cycles/degree. The overall concentration of RGCs gradually declined towards the periphery but the size of cells generally decreased towards centrally. The size of ganglion cell was not uniform (12 to 180 μm2), specifically the central retina, just above the optic disc was packed with tiny-sized cells. The number, topographic distribution, and size of RGCs in native chicken signified their domesticated or terrestrial characters, uneven visual acuteness, and possibly only the central retina was the area for fine vision as the function of RGCs.

KEY WORDS: Area centralis; Native chicken; Peak density; Retinal ganglion cell; Spatial resolving power.

UDDIN, M.; AL FARUQ, A.; SOHEL, M. S. H.; IMAMOTO, Y. & RAHMAN, M. L. Retinal ganglion cell topography and spatial resolving power of eye in the native chicken of Bangladesh. Int. J. Morphol., 40(2):289-296, 2022.