03-10-2009, 11:29 AM
[quote PBH]Grayling are about as closely related to whitefish as they are rainbow and cutthroat trout. Grayling, Whitefish, Rainbow and Cutthroat trout are all Salmonids. None of them are very closely related to the Utah chub.[/quote]
Feels like I'm back in biology! Your response is all well and good. I think that the scientific approach is a noble thing that helps us better understand the world, even fishing. However, I made no statements about grayling/cyprinid relation. I'd never consider a grayling to be in the same family as chubs, tench, barbs, and carp! Only that they look similar to chubs in some respects. I'm not the only one who thinks that either, since whitefish (same family as grayling and trout) are described often has having a structure similar to the cyprinids. [url "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_whitefish"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_whitefish[/url] Since whitefish, trout, and grayling are all in the Salmonidae family, they are, infact, closely related. I think most will agree that grayling look more like whitefish than they do trout.
On an interesting side note, the case of the salmonids has been used recently as proof of rapid evolution, since all the species diverged from a common ancestor fairly recently compared to other fishes. Thankfully, what that has translated to for fishermen is a wide variety of beautiful fish with similar characteristics that we can catch. It's nice to think about how in one lake you can get a whopper lake trout, and in another you can get an attractive little brookie. Awesome stuff.
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Feels like I'm back in biology! Your response is all well and good. I think that the scientific approach is a noble thing that helps us better understand the world, even fishing. However, I made no statements about grayling/cyprinid relation. I'd never consider a grayling to be in the same family as chubs, tench, barbs, and carp! Only that they look similar to chubs in some respects. I'm not the only one who thinks that either, since whitefish (same family as grayling and trout) are described often has having a structure similar to the cyprinids. [url "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_whitefish"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_whitefish[/url] Since whitefish, trout, and grayling are all in the Salmonidae family, they are, infact, closely related. I think most will agree that grayling look more like whitefish than they do trout.
On an interesting side note, the case of the salmonids has been used recently as proof of rapid evolution, since all the species diverged from a common ancestor fairly recently compared to other fishes. Thankfully, what that has translated to for fishermen is a wide variety of beautiful fish with similar characteristics that we can catch. It's nice to think about how in one lake you can get a whopper lake trout, and in another you can get an attractive little brookie. Awesome stuff.
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