Perthshire Advertiser

New species of brown trout found in loch

‘Exciting’discovery

- Rachel Clark

A distinct species of brown trout has been discovered by researcher­s in a Perthshire loch.

Researcher­s at the University of the Highlands and Islands have found four different species of brown trout in Loch Laidon, which sits in one of the most remote parts of Perthshire between Rannoch and the border with Argyll and Bute.

The study, led by Professor Eric Verspoor, found the four species to be geneticall­y, ecological­ly and visually distinctiv­e, and says they have evolved in the loch for the last 10,000 years.

Researcher­s from the university’s rivers and lochs institute used methodolog­y designed to detect the presence of distinct population types, involving systematic sampling of the loch and DNA analyses designed to identify different genetic population­s.

One of the trout species discovered, known as ‘profundal benthivore’ has not yet been reported to occur in any other loch in the brown trout’s native range.

This type of trout differs from the common form as it has lighter skin and a larger mouth and eyes. It tends to inhabit deep, dark waters of lochs where little light penetrates, and feeds on organisms on the loch bottom.

Professor Verspoor said: “This is essentiall­y a distinct species of brown trout, never before reported, and the total number of forms found in Loch Laidon is the highest number so far found in a single lake.

“While that in itself is exciting, what’s more significan­t is that the study strongly suggests that the amount of biodiversi­ty in Scotland’s lochs, and indeed many of the freshwater lakes in the northern hemisphere, has been massively underestim­ated.

“This is because, unfortunat­ely, few of our lochs have so far been studied with methods such as Professor Eric Verspoor with Ron Greer, an ecologist with Scottish Fisheries, out on Loch Laidon those we employed that are better able to resolve such diversity when it exists.

“Thus findings such as those for Loch Laidon may well be the tip of a biodiversi­ty iceberg in Scottish and other northern lakes - the true size of this iceberg will only become clear once we study more lakes suing methods such as those we employed.”

The research on the Laidon trout by Professor Verspoor and Dr Mark Coulson along with coworkers from the rivers and lochs institute, was published in the September journal of ‘Freshwater Biology’, with a sister paper published earlier in the year in the ‘Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society’.

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