The Coomasaharn char, a morphometrically highly specialised form of Salvelinus alpinus in Ireland

Abstract

A reputedly 'unique' Irish form of Arctic char, characterised by its long and numerous gill rakers and referred to as Salvelinus fimbriatus [Regan, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History2 (1908) 225], has long been known to inhabit Coomasaharn Lough in the south-west of Ireland. However, this species description was based on a single specimen and, in the intervening period, little research on the unusual gill attributes of the char population has been published. In 2000, the char population of the lake was surveyed by gill netting. The morphometrics of the head region and the gill raker attributes of this population of Irish char were compared with two other Irish char populations. The results of this analysis highlighted the specialised morphology of the Coomasaharn char in an Irish context and demonstrated the planktivorous nature of the Coomasaharn char. © 2007 Blackwell Munksgaard.