Taxonomic novelties and problems for users

Abstract

The authors of this book define their aim as “to summarize both the authors’ own data and that which is in the literature and is directly related to nomenclature and the taxonomy of freshwater and brackish water agnathans and fishes of Russia” (p. 7). However, that which they did can hardly be termed “a summarization of data”. Moreover, we question the rationality of their suggested changes of nomenclature and classification, which substantially alter previous notions reflected, in particular, in “The Annotated check-list of Cyclostomata and Fishes of the continental Russia” (1998) and in “Atlas of freshwater fishes from Russia” (2002). For instance, the families Comephoridae and Abyssocottidae are transformed into subfamilies; the genus Chalcalburnus is included in the genus Alburnus , so that the latter comprises of four species instead of one; vobla is distinguished as the separate species Rutilus caspicus ; four species are added to the genus Phoxinus ; the subspecies Carassius auratus gibelio acquires a species status; and both black and white Baikal grayling, as well as Kamchatka and East Siberian grayling are recognized as different species. Many similar examples can be found in the other groups of fishes. Whitefishes (g. Coregonus ) and chars (g. Salvelinus ) are especially unlucky. Earlier Kottelat (1997) recognized 44 species of whitefishes, and 23 species of chars in Western Europe. Thus, every lake is seen to have its own endemic species of whitefishes and chars. N.G. Bogutskaya and A.M. Naseka have extended this approach to the fish fauna of Russia. As a result we find that Coregonus lavaretus is absent in Russia, but 13 new whitefish species (Volkhov whitefish, valaamka, ludoga, marena, Chud whitefish, middle rakered whitefish, many rakered whitefish, pidzhyan, Pravdin’s small whitefish, Telets whitefish, Baikal whitefish, Bauntov whitefish, and Anadyr whitefish) appear in its place. Changes of this sort baffle those ichthyologists, who are not specialists in taxonomy, but use the results of the taxonomists' labor. We will call these ichthyologists “users”.