New publication: Phylogeny of Caspian grayling

A close relationship between Caspian and Fennoscandian haplotypes  found in this study implies that the Caspian basin might have been a corridor for grayling dispersal connecting eastern and northern Europe.
To find out more, read the whole paper.

Announcement

This announcment is just to let you know the chapter on the marble trout has been updated and is worth seeing.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

The chair for Genetics, Animal Biotechnology and Immunology was nominated for ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

BTRG being a part of the Chair, participated with two of its members, Ida and Aleš.

As seen from the video, two institutions have already been nominated, however, BTRG is nominating also Steven Weiss group at “the Karl-FranzensUniversität Graz, Institut für Zoologie. and Omega d.o.o.

Intercontinental Trout Masterclass in Tolmin

Simona and Aleš attended Intercontinental Trout Masterclass, where they were invited to give a lecture on conservation genetics of marble trout and Adriatic grayling in the Soča catchment.

The aim of the workshop, organized by Continental Trout Conservation Fund (Rene Beaumont) and held in Tomin from 25. – 29. Aug., was to introduce diverse conservation principles and aspects of freshwater wildlife to young people from different countries, who care about nature. The mascot of the workshop was indigenous trout, and the fil rouge was the story of success referring to the marble trout restoration project in the Soča River.

> Field work: ITM participants and Dušan Jesenšek discuss different marble trout phenotypes.

Mystery of "Caspian taimen" solved

Taxonomic status of "Caspian taimen" has been resolved using genetic approach. You can find more about it in our new publication "First mtDNA sequencing of Volga and Ob basin taimen Hucho taimen: European populations stem from a late Pleistocene expansion of H. taimen out of western Siberia and are not intermediate to Hucho hucho".

Save the Blue Heart of Europe

BTRG joins the Balkan Rivers campaign, "Save the Blue Heart of Europe", initiated by Ulrich Eichelmann, head of the NGO Riverwatch, as a response to the threat of hundreds of planned hydropower dams throughout the western Balkans.
More details about this conservation initiative can be found at www.balkanrivers.net.

Erratum to "Molecular phylogeny of Salmo of the western Balkans, based upon multiple nuclear loci"

After publication of this work, Johannes noted a mistake occurring in Table 1, Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 4 and on page 6 (Result section). In these places of the article, we wrote that the two brown trout samples of the Mediterranean (ME) lineage came from Sardinia, which is not the case. These two samples of the ME lineage were taken from the small river Caranca, a tributary to the Tet River in France and this lineage carried a single mtDNA haplotype MEcs3. Samples were provided by Patrick Berrebi.

This information could be much misleading for those who study Mediterranean trout given that only AD and AT haplotypes have been found in Sardinian rivers so far.

 

The authors thank Johannes for pointing out the mistake and apologize for this awkwardness.

 

New publication - finally

We used SNP markers developed by Gašper in his PhD work for reconstructing Salmo phylogeny with emphasis on Balkan trout.The results have been just published in GSE, 2014, 46:7.