Coregonidae

4.6 | Coregonidae

Coregonus albula was introduced to Tabatskuri and Paravani Lakes (southern Georgia) from the Volkhov Hatchery at Ladoga Lake in 1930s ( Barach, 1941). The local populations are still present and commercially valuable in Georgia though the abundance is decreasing due to the unavailability of local hatcheries (Kuljanishvili, Mumladze, Kalous, & Japoshvili, 2018).

The taxonomic status of the introduced Caucasian whitefish remains unsolved. Based on literature ( Barach, 1940; Dadikyan, 1964; Mailyan, 1957) two species were introduced to Lake Sevan in the 1920s: Coregonus ludoga from Lake Ladoga and Coregonus maraenoides from Lake Chudskoe (both in Northern European Russia). These two species naturalised and hybridised in the lake ( Mailyan, 1957) and an intermediate phenotype was subsequently described as a Coregonus lavaretus sevanicus by Dadikyan (1986). Coregonus sevanicus might represent a valid species of hybrid origin. However, due to scarcity of recent data we cannot confirm or reject any taxonomic hypothesis related to Caucasian whitefishes. Thus, we list only Coregonus sp. in the checklist. According to Elanidze (1983) in 1930-ies C. ludoga was also introduced from Volkhov hatchery to Lake Tabatskuri in Georgia through the species was not recorded for at least the last 50 years. As there are no recent records of any Coregonus from Lake Tabatskuri, we suspect that the population might be extirpated.