Morphological analysis and pathological changes of erythrocytes of gobiidae fish of the genus Ponticola Iljin, 1927

Goby fish of the genus Ponticola in the Black Sea ecosystem play a rather important role, and are also objects of amateur fishing. However, a small number of scientific studies have been devoted to their study. Literary data on blood pathologies of Ponticola species are generally absent, as such studies are more often conducted on modelorganisms or commercially important species.The work presents the results of a morphological analysis and the study of pathological changes in erythrocytesand their nuclei for the Pinchuk’s goby Ponticola cephalargoides (Pinchuk, 1976), the ratan goby Ponticola ratan (Nordmann, 1840), and the ginger goby Ponticola eurycephalus (Kessler, 1874), caught during the summer-autumn period of 2023 in the Odessa Bay of the Black Sea. Blood for erythrocyte studies was taken from the tail vein and fixed using standard methods.The presence of young, mature erythrocytes, and cells with pathological changes in the circulating blood of all representatives of the genus Ponticola was revealed. Erythrocytes of Pinchuk’s goby were the largest in terms of basic morphometric parameters, and the highest frequency of erythrocytes with pathological changes wasestablished for the blood of the ginger goby.The most common pathologies for representatives of the genus Ponticola are nuclear changes (bean-shaped, lobular) and arbitrary cell deformation.The increased frequency and significant variety of pathological changes in erythrocytes in all studied species of the genus Ponticola indicate the existing negative impact of environmental factors.