Tumors of the Testis in the Mexican Axolotl (Ambystoma, or Siredon, mexicanum)

Abstract

Although neoplasms in the Amphibia occur with considerable frequency, ones originating in the testis seem to be very rarely encountered. In an extensive review published in 1962 Balls (1) was able to include only a single case, that of a carcinoma in Megalobatracbus maximus reported by Pick and Poll (2). In view of this apparent scarcity of neoplasms in the amphibian testis, it is rather remarkable that 16 have been found in Mexican axolotls of the writer’s colony. The first of these was discovered in 1941 in a white male about 6 years of age which had been obtained in 193 5 from Dr. Cranford Hutchinson, then at the Morris Biological Farm of the Wistar Institute. Fundamentally similar tumors have since been found in 15 additional animals, most of them of the same white strain. The last of the series was found in 1968; the tumors have thus been appearing at intervals over a period of 27 years. Five of them were found while the axolotl colony was at the University of Buffalo, and the remaining 11 since its transfer to Indiana University in 1957.

Contribution No. 817 from the Department of Zoology, Indiana University. This study was supported in part by research grant ROl GM 05850 from the Research Grants Division, National Institutes of Health, United States Public Health Service. The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Robert Briggs and Mrs. Carolyn Huffman in the preparation of the illustrations