Herring whitefish
| Herring whitefish | ||||||||||||
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Herring vendace ( Coregonus clupeaformis ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Coregonus clupeaformis | ||||||||||||
| ( Mitchill , 1818) |
The herring vendace ( Coregonus clupeaformis , English Lake Whitefish) is a North American freshwater fish of the genus Coregonus (whitefish, whitefish, vendace) in the salmon family . It is common in much of Canada and in the northern US states of Minnesota and Michigan on the Great Lakes . It is a valuable food fish and is also caught occasionally .
They are olive green to blue on the back, with silvery sides. The small mouth stands under a rounded snout and the tail is forked deep. Its habitat is freshwater lakes , where it prefers deep, cool water.
The herring whitefish spawns in 2 to 4 meters deep water between September and January. In late summer, the Athabasca Delta is the transit station for a large spawning migration that moves up the Athabasca River . The longest uninterrupted migration of a tagged vendace was 388 km, from Fort McMurray to the north shore of Lake Athabasca in Alberta .
Natural predators include burbot , pike and the Namaycush char .
The herring whitefish belongs to the whitefish and feeds on crustaceans , snails , insects and other small aquatic animals.
The herring vendace and evolution
Since the end of the last glacial period (about 12,000 years ago) vendace has been able to repopulate many North American lakes. While they migrated into these habitats, a number of morphologically different populations developed through adaptive radiation , so that two main ecotypes are now differentiated within the species : a "normal" and a "dwarf" ecotype. These ecotypes differ mainly in that they occupy the benthic or pelagic zone. The "normal" vendace is also much larger and more durable than the "dwarf vendace".
Many of these populations occur sympatric and are reproductively isolated from one another . The fact that they are young species makes them prime candidates for studying the evolutionary forces that led to their ecological divergence and reproductive isolation.
credentials
- ↑ The English term "whitefish" stands for whitefish or whitefish ( Coregonus ) and has nothing to do with the white fish that belong to the carp fish .