The aurora trout, ''Salvelinus fontinalis timagamiensis'', is a variant or subspecies of the brook trout native to two lakes in the

Temagami Temagami, formerly spelled as Timagami, is a municipality in northeastern Ontario, Canada, in the Nipissing District with Lake Temagami at its heart. The Temagami region is known as ''n'Daki Menan'', the homeland of the area's First Nations co ...

District of

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. The existence of the fish was brought to the attention of the angling world by four American anglers who were taken by Archie King of Latchford, Ontario, into

's Lady Evelyn River system in 1923. Recognizing the fish as different or unique, the anglers took a specimen back to the Carnegie Museum in

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, in the

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, where Dr. Arthur W. Henn was asked to identify the fish. He wrote about the fish in 1925 wherein he and Rinckenbach identified it as a distinct species, ''Salvelinus timagamiensis'', but since a seminal re-examination of the material by Sale in 1967, taxonomists now agree the fish is, in a fact, at most a subspecies of the brook trout, named ''Salvelinus fontinalis timagamiensis''. Genetic data has not yet supported its taxonomic distinction.''Recovery Strategy for the Aurora trout (''Salvelinus fontinalis timagamiensis'') in Canada''
Species at Risk Act Recovery Strategy Series. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, July 2006. The aurora trout is distinguished from the brook trout by its unique coloration. Aurora trout are generally without spots, the colouration grading from a magenta hue on the back to a bright, nearly fluorescent orange along the belly, especially in mature males. The life history of the fish is essentially identical to that of the brook trout. Adults average about 0.5 to 1.5 kg, although individuals up to 4 kg are known. The aurora trout occupied a very restricted range, probably occurring in only two lakes, Whitepine and

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, and their inflowing streams. The subspecies was

extirpated Local extinction, also known as extirpation, refers to a species (or other taxon) of plant or animal that ceases to exist in a chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere. Local extinctions are contrasted with global extinct ...

from the original lakes by the ravages of acid rain in the late 1950s, but was saved from

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds ( taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed ...

by Paul Graf, a

hatchery A hatchery is a facility where eggs are hatched under artificial conditions, especially those of fish, poultry or even turtles. It may be used for ex-situ conservation purposes, i.e. to breed rare or endangered species under controlled cond ...

manager at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. He had brought a brood stock of the fish into the hatchery at Hill's Lake near Charlton, Ontario. He sometimes feared the fish might have been taking up valuable space in the hatchery and, on several occasions, thought about getting rid of them, until they were found to have been extirpated from the wild. Naturalised populations of aurora trout have been introduced into about a dozen lakes in

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as refugia. In the late 1980s, the original lakes were treated with lime to raise the pH to circumneutral conditions, and aurora trout were reintroduced. Natural

reproduction Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – " offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual o ...

of aurora trout has been documented in the original lakes since the reintroduction, but the pH in the lakes has since begun to decline again, presumably because of reservoirs of acidic particulate depositions in the watershed.

References

External links

''The Aurora Trout ... a Species at Risk in Ontario''
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (2010-09-27) {{DEFAULTSORT:Aurora Trout Salvelinus Fish described in 1925 Endemic fauna of Ontario