Morphological observation of small spines on puffer fish skin

A morphological and metrical observation of small spines and their basements of 169 individuals belonging to 5 genera and 15 species of puffer fishes were performed to establish a practical identification in the food sanitary monitoring. According to the morphological observation for total 1,106 specimens derived from the individuals, characteristics of combination patterns of number of front and back roots of the structures were divided into 5 groups, and the morphological pattern observed in each group was almost accorded with each fish generic level. Especially, characteristics of the morphological and metrical records of the small spines and their basements were shown with the fish species