Little Kern golden trout
| Little Kern golden trout | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Salmoniformes |
| Family: | Salmonidae |
| Genus: | Oncorhynchus |
| Species: | O. mykiss |
| Subspecies: | O. m. whitei |
| Trinomial name | |
|
Oncorhynchus mykiss whitei (Evermann, 1906) |
|
 |
|
| Kern River trout range map | |
The Little Kern golden trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss whitei) is a brightly colored subspecies of rainbow trout native to the main stem and tributaries of the Little Kern River in Tulare County, California. Together with the California golden trout (the state fish of California) and the Kern River rainbow trout, the Little Kern golden trout forms what is sometimes referred to as the "golden trout complex" of the Kern River basin.
The evolutionary relationships between salmonoids is a matter of ongoing discovery, and there are different opinions about how specific populations should be grouped and named. The same can be said for the Little Kern Golden trout, which has experienced several classification revisions since its first formal description.
The Little Kern golden trout was first described as Salmo Whitei in 1906 by the biologist Barton Warren Evermann in his book ...The Golden Trout of the Southern High Sierras. Everman had been sent to the Kern Plateau by Theodore Roosevelt, after Roosevelt's friend Stewart Edward White had expressed concern that the brightly colored trout of the region were at risk of being fished into extinction. Everman named the fish in honor of White's role in its recognition.
In 1989, morphological and genetic studies by Gerald Smith and Ralph Stearley indicated that trouts of the Pacific basin were genetically closer to Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus species) than to the Salmos; brown trout (Salmo trutta) or Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) of the Atlantic basin. Furthermore, in 1992 the Little Kern Golden trout was then classified as a subspecies of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) by Robert J. Behnke. This led to the classification most commonly accepted today; Oncorhynchus mykiss whitei.
The Little Kern golden trout is a brightly colored fish with profuse black spots on the back and tail. The belly and cheeks are typically a bright orange to orange-red. The lower sides of the fish range from a light yellow to bright gold. The back is olive green. The pectoral, pelvic and anal fins are orange with white tips. Unlike many varieties of rainbow trout, but similar to other redband trout and trout in the "Golden Trout Complex", the Little Kern Golden Trout typically retain into adulthood up to ten parr marks along their sides. There is also often an intermediate row of smaller parr marks occurring above and/or below the main row of parr marks.
...
Wikipedia