Salvelinus umbla

Salvelinus umbla, also known as lake char, is a species of char found in certain lakes of the region of the Alps in Europe.[2]

This article is about the European species. For the North American species also referred to as lake char, see Lake trout.

Salvelinus umbla
Salvelinus umbla juvenile
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Salmoniformes
Family: Salmonidae
Genus: Salvelinus
Species:
S. umbla
Binomial name
Salvelinus umbla
(Linnaeus, 1758)
Synonyms

Salmo umbla Linnaeus, 1758
Salmo salvelinus Linnaeus, 1758
Salvelinus salvelinus (Linnaeus, 1758)

This char species usually inhabits the deeper waters of the lakes, feeding on crustaceans, insects and benthic fauna. Larger specimens can be piscivores. They look for areas with pebbly or stony bottom on steep slopes, at depths between 30 and 120 m during the spawning season.[3]

Distribution

This char species lives in alpine and subalpine glacial valley lakes of central Europe, between France and Austria and between Germany and Northern Italy. It has been introduced in high altitude lakes as well.

Although it is assessed as a least concern species by IUCN, the eutrophication of the lakes in the Subalpine region, which began in the 1950s and peaked in 1979, badly affected Salvelinus umbla populations, which crashed during that period. The lake char became locally extinct in lakes such as Mondsee and other char species, such as Salvelinus profundus, were driven to extinction in the same period. Currently, however, most lake char populations are gradually recovering.[4]

The name Salvelinus umbla has also been used in Sweden of char populations of central parts of the country, referred to as storröding (large char) in distinction of the northern fjällröding ( = Salvelinus alpinus).[5] These populations are not thought to be related to the Central European populations, rather storröding from Lake Sommen and Lake Vättern are closely related to the char of Lake Ladoga in Russia.[6]

References
  1. IUCN Red list
  2. Salvelinus umbla - FishBase
  3. EOL - Salvelinus umbla - Lake Char
  4. The German Federal Nature Conservation Agency (BfN): Red List - Volume 1: Vertebrates (2009) - General assessment for the vertebrate groups Archived 2013-06-23 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Svensson M et al. (2010) Fiskar - Fishes - Pisces Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine In Rödlistade arter i Sverige 2010 (Swedish Red List 2010), 323-332
  6. Hammar, J. (2014). "Natural resilience in Arctic charr Salvelinus alpinus: life history, spatial and dietary alterations along gradients of interspecific interactions". Fish Biology. 85 (1): 81–118. doi:10.1111/jfb.12321. PMID 24754706.
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