Salmo ciscaucasicus, the Caspian salmon or Terek trout, is a salmonid fish endemic to the Caspian Sea and its inflowing rivers.[2] It was described in 1967 originally as a subspecies of Salmo trutta.[3] S. ciscaucasicus lives on the western shore of the lake from northern Azerbaijan to the Ural River, while the main breeding river is the Terek. It lives at depths down to 50 m. Males can reach a maximum standard length of 130 cm.[2] Forms of the species include anadromous, lacustrine, and resident. In the northern Ural and Volga, there may be hybrids between S. ciscaucasicus and S. trutta.[4]

Salmo ciscaucasicus
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Salmoniformes
Family: Salmonidae
Genus: Salmo
Species:
S. ciscaucasicus
Binomial name
Salmo ciscaucasicus
Dorofeeva, 1967
Synonyms[1]
  • Salmo trutta ciscaucasicus Dorofeeva, 1967

Another species, Salmo caspius Kessler, 1877, inhabits the southern part of the Caspian, but it is considerably smaller in size.

References

edit
  1. ^ Synonyms of Salmo ciscaucasicus at www.fishbase.org.
  2. ^ a b Salmo ciscaucasicus at www.fishbase.org.
  3. ^ Dorofeeva, E. A., 1967 Comparative morphological principles of taxonomy of East European salmons. Voprosy Ikhtiologii v. 7: 3-17.
  4. ^ Kottelat, Maurice; Freyhof, Jörg (February 2008). "Handbook of European freshwater fishes". Ichthyological Research. 55 (1): 427–428. doi:10.1007/s10228-007-0012-3. ISSN 1341-8998.