09-20-2017, 02:42 PM
Quote:"Trout and Salmon of North America" (Robert Behnke)
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Bonneville basin cutthroat trout were variously classified as "Salmo vifginalis," S. mykiss virginalis," and "S. clarki virginalis."
"Salmo virginalis" was the name given in 1856 to Rio Grande cutthroat trout collected from Ute Creek in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Somehow Ute Creek became "Utah Creek" in the early literature and was assumed to be a stream in the Bonneville basin of Utah.
George Suckley, a surgeon-naturalist with the Pacific Railroad Survey during teh 1850s, compiled a manuscriipt, called "On the North American Species of Salmon and Trout", that he completed in 1861 and published in 1874. In this work, Suckley mentions a "variety" of "Salmo virginalis" that occurs in Utah Lake. When he compared the Utah Lake specimens with other cutthroat specimens from the Bonneville basin, Suckley saw that lake specimens were "less spotted". He wrote: "for this variety or kind we will, for the present, apply the provisional name of Salmo utah." Existence in a large lake environment results in a silvery coloration with large, round spots modified into small, irregularly shaped, speckle-like spotting. Although Suckley intended the name "utah" only to distinguish the cutthroat trout of Utah Lake from other Bonneville basin cutthroat trout, which he classified as "Salmo virginalis," the name "utah" is the first name published for any Bonneville basin cutthroat trout, and "Oncorhynchus clarki utah" is now the subspecies name for all cutthroat trout native to the basin.
TubeDude -- do you know where that article was published, and when? It appears to have been written after Suckley published his work. H.C. Yarrow only did a portion of his homework...
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