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.