Skin Grafts in the Lizard, Anolis Carolinensis, Cuv

ABSTRACT Autotransplants of pigmented (melanophore-bearing) skin on a white region, and of white skin on a pigmented region both exhibit a strict specificity. There is no migration of the melanophores in any case of transplantation. Transplants of pigmented skin lose their colour-changing power immediately on being completely disconnected from neighbouring tissues, and regain it slowly as nerves regenerate. The melanophores are supplied largely by nerves which reach them directly through the underlying tissues. If these nerves are cut from a given area of skin, without separating the area from the surrounding skin, it at first loses the power of colour change, but the neighbouring integument appears able, after a delay of a few days, to control the denervated area. Areas of melanophore-bearing skin, isolated by incision from surrounding skin, but with their subcutaneous connections intact, can act normally with the rest of the animal in the colour-changes. Adrenalin, in producing the green state in pigmented grafts which have regained the colour-changing function, acts as it does upon normal integument. The action is indirectly through the sympathetic nervous system, and not directly upon the melanophores. Homoiotransplants, either pigmented or white, are absorbed. The absorption occurs after the grafts have well healed in place. The scutes disappear, leaving the area covered by thin scaleless integument. New scutes regenerate wherever there are areas barren of them. Scute regeneration progresses centripetally, suggesting some formative influence exerted by the surrounding normal integument.