Sunday, September 02, 2007

Sockanee


Interesting news from British Columbia Canada indicates that kokanee salmon can become sockeye salmon given the opportunity. Kokanee salmon are landlocked sockeye, spending their lifecycle in freshwater migrating from lakes upstream to spawn. Sockeye are much larger and migrate from the ocean to fresh water.
I had always thought that speciation had occurred between these fish, and while that still may be the case it looks as if kokanee (at least those found in Alouette lake) have retained their ability to live in salt water. This has implications for the potential to restore previously destroyed salmon runs. This is based on the news that kokanee released inadvertently during an opening of a dam on Alouette Lake have returned as Sockeye. Granted these kokanee had only been land locked for not even a century but it may have implications for other salmon runs that have been interrupted for longer periods. Unfortunately the information I was able for find did not discuss this in an evolutionary context, which would be the most interesting aspect of this story to myself.


6 comments:

Anonymous Coward said...

Actually there is a great example of speciation from land-locking right in our capital. I've spent most of my youth capturing various organisms living in streams around the Gatineau Park where I lived, when I wasn't collecting fossils. The fossils where always from marine animals, from the time where this area was submerged under the Champlain sea. When the sea receded, it left some deep salty lakes, such as Pink lake. The change from salty to freshwater was gradual enough to let one marine species, the "epinoche a trois epines" to evolve into a lake fish. I've cought many of these fish in streams, and they always fascinated me.

Bayman said...

Crazy. Maybe Homo sapiens would convert to Neanderthals if transplanted to an ice age (or whatever the Neanderthal environment was)? Then maybe no one one would need to be pansexual at all...

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wow I though that the red colored fishes can be watch it just in video games O.o
Anyway this very interesting, they change color or they are like that ?
Thanks

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Yeah this is like the red tide or something, but this don't kill fishes isn't ?
Thanks nice post.

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