''Salvelinus elgyticus'' is a species of fish in the salmon family,

Salmonidae Salmonidae (, ) is a family (biology), family of ray-finned fish, the only extant member of the suborder Salmonoidei, consisting of 11 extant genera and over 200 species collectively known as "salmonids" or "salmonoids". The family includes salmo ...

. It is a member of genus ''

Salvelinus ''Salvelinus'' is a genus of Salmonidae, salmonid fish often called char or charr; some species are called "trout". ''Salvelinus'' is a member of the subfamily Salmoninae within the family Salmonidae. The genus has a northern circumpolar distrib ...

'', the chars. It is known commonly as the small-mouth char (). It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to Lake Elgygytgyn in eastern

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

.Froese, R. and D. Pauly, Editors
''Salvelinus elgyticus''.
FishBase. 2015.

Description

It is a small char species, dark colored with light spots, reaching a maximum length of just over . Little is known about its habits and life cycle.

Biology

This cold water fish is named after its native lake, which is located in Chukotka,

n Federation. This species and its relative, the long-finned char (''Salvethymus svetovidovi'') are limited to this remote lake, which is an

impact crater An impact crater is a depression (geology), depression in the surface of a solid astronomical body formed by the hypervelocity impact event, impact of a smaller object. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal c ...

. They are adapted to its very cold waters, which are generally just above the freezing point. The surface is frozen for about 10 months of the year. It may start to melt in the summer, but some years it never fully thaws. This fish spends most of the year in total darkness. ''Salvelinus elgyticus'' is considered a

threatened species A threatened species is any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which is vulnerable to extinction in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of ''critical depensatio ...

by some authors,Chereshnev, I. A. (1998)
Threatened fishes of the world: ''Salvelinus elgyticus'' Viktorovskii & Glubokovskii, 1981 (Salmonidae).
''Environmental biology of fishes'', 51(1) 24. but it has not yet been evaluated by

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

References

External links

''Salvelinus elgyticus'' illustration.
The Red Book of the Russian Federation. elgyticus Endemic fauna of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Cold water fish Fish described in 1981 {{Salmonidae-stub