Trout

Our pliers are exhibited alongside the heads of trout.

Artifacts in the Collections

Trout. Three heads. Open jawed. Mid-20th century, c.e. Exhibited alongside Pliers. From the Leroy Short Sporting and Wild Game Memorial.

fa.1999.22, 23, and 25.ox

Overview

The quest for nourishment is a continuous occupation for Chordates as they school through their watery homes, oceans and lakes both large and small.

Biological Interpretation

Trout is the common name given to a number of species of freshwater fish belonging to the Salmonidae family.

The freshwater form is called "rainbow trout", based on the broad red band along their sides. Steelhead are exactly the same species as rainbow trout. However, the difference is anadromy. After going to sea, their color changes, including loss of the red band. They stay at sea for 1-4 years, and return to fresh water to spawn. Rainbows stay in fresh water their whole lives.

The rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss, formerly iridia) is a species of salmonid native to tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America as well as much of the central, western, eastern, and especially the northern portions of the United States. The ocean going (anadromous) form (including those returning for spawning) are known as steelhead, or ocean trout (Australia). The species has been introduced for food or sport to at least 45 countries, and every continent except Antarctica. In some of these locations, such as Southern Europe, Australia and South America, they have had very serious negative impacts on upland native fish species, either by eating them, outcompeting them, transmitting contagious diseases, or hybridization with closely related species and subspecies that are native to western North America.

Nomenclature

The species was originally named by Johann Julius Walbaum in 1792 based on type specimens from Kamchatka. Richardson named a specimen of this species Salmo gairdneri in 1836, and in 1855, W. P. Gibbons found a population and named it Salmo iridia, later corrected to Salmo irideus, however these names became deprecated once it was determined that Walbaum's type description was conspecific and therefore had precedence (see E.G. Behnke, 1966).

More recently, DNA studies showed rainbow trout are genetically closer to Pacific salmon (Onchorhynchus species) than to brown trout (Salmo trutta) or Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar), so the genus was changed.

Unlike the species' former name's epithet iridia (Latin: "rainbow"), the specific epithet mykiss derives from the local Kamchatkan name mykizha. All of Walbaum's species names were based on Kamchatkan local names.