Mr. René Beaumont visited BTRG

Last week we hosted Mr. René Beaumont, the founder of Continental Trout Conservation Fund (CTCF).

Together we made a trip to the Soča river, visited Dušan Jesenšek, discussed situation of indigenous trout in Slovenia and the Balkans and also used this opportunity to perform a “photo session” of marble x brown trout hybrids for the purpose of coloration patter formation study.

> Electrofishing for hybrids in Stopnikarca stream. The fish are a product of natural hybridization between S. marmoratus x S. trutta, experimentally initiated about a decade ago by introducing into a fishless stretch an equal number of marble and brown trout individuals.

Next day a meeting was arranged at the Department of Animal Science, where René presented the role and mission of CTCF. Quite some people being in one way or another connected with trout attended this meeting; René’s presentation was highly interesting, the ideas  promising and well appreciated by everybody.

Saša is going home

It's been almost a month since Saša Marić came on the traditional visit to BTRG genetic laboratory. This time, the main issue of his work was phylogeography of Balkan trout based on entire D-loop sequences and as well population genetic analysis of Balkan bullhead from karstic system in Serbia; the main idea was to examine underground gene flow between populations lacking surface interconnections. Tomorrow he is going home, sweet home.

New publication

A paper describing a part of Urška's PhD thesis has been published recently in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology.
Paper highlights: •identification of four genes likely involved in color pattern in marble trout. •marble pattern is partially based upon a reaction-diffusion mechanism, which is known to be responsible for different color pattern formation also in other animals

See an interesting movie of marble pattern formation below.

Russian expedition part II - European taimen

In the summer, 2012 Saša attended another expedition organized by Oleg Askeyev, this time to go for European taimen. The expedition started in Larix sibirica zone (the trees behind).


The main idea was to solve the question of the origin of this fish: did they evolve from European Huchen or Asiatic taimen?

>  Tayga in western Ural - European taimen country

>  European taimen - apparently not very different from its Danubian relative with the exception of the red-colored anal and caudal fins, something resembling a "real" taimen. What will the molecules say?

KARAFISH workshop – genetic part

In the context of INTERREG IV project Slovenia–Austria 2007-2013: High altitude distribution of brown trot (Salmo trutta) and occurrence of bullhead (Cottus sp.) in the mountain range Karavanke (KARAFISH), there was the Fourth Workshop few days ago at the Fisheries Research Institute of Slovenia.
The objective of the workshop was to present the final results of genetic analysis of the brown trout and bullhead from the studied area that BTRG (Klavdija, Nejc, Simona and I) performed for the KARAFISH project.
Nejc gave a talk on Bullhead and I did it on brown trout.
It was a nice meeting; we’ve got opportunity to listen to an interesting talk about brown trout parasites given by Dr. Robert Konecny from the Environmental Agency Austria, who also participated on this project.

The highlights of the genetic report:
• Out of 25 tested populations of brown trout, three of them (the upper Meža and Koprivna rivers, the Drava system; the Jurčef stream, the Savinja system) turned out as ”genetically pure” (non-introgressed with “Atlantic brown trout” genes).
• In the Sava tributaries (Slovenian slope of Karavanke Mountains), only mtDNA haplotypes characterizing C. metae were found; the Drava tributaries (either in Austria or Slovenia) were found to be populated with bullhead bearing C. gobio haplotypes. This finding confirmed previously proposed areal of C. metae, which should occupy the area of the Sava river system in Slovenia.