Cisco (fish) - Continental North American Ciscoes: Coregonus Artedi Sensu Lato

Continental North American Ciscoes: Coregonus Artedi Sensu Lato

Eight taxa of cisco have been recognized in the Laurentian Great Lakes and other interior lakes of the once-glaciated North America.

• Longjaw cisco – Coregonus alpenae
• Cisco (lake cisco, northern cisco, or lake herring) – Coregonus artedi
• Deepwater cisco – Coregonus johannae
• Bloater – Coregonus hoyi
• Kiyi – Coregonus kiyi
• Blackfin cisco – Coregonus nigripinnis
• Shortnose cisco – Coregonus reighardi
• Shortjaw cisco – Coregonus zenithicus

Usually, several taxa of ciscoes are found in a single lake. They exhibit different habitat distributions, feeding and breeding habits and morphological adaptations e.g. in their gill raker numbers. In the Great Lakes, at least five ciscoes coexist.

According to genetic analyses, these cisco types do not represent unique, separate evolutionary lineages, but similar cisco morphs have evolved and attained their specific characteristics largely independently in each lake. Therefore it has been suggested that they should not be recognized formally as distinct taxa, but all considered members of a single species, Coregonus artedi (sensu lato). or Coregonus artedi complex. Nevertheless for conservation and management purposes the sympatric morphs in each lake should be considered ESUs, evolutionarily significant units. This taxonomic view is not widely accepted however, which has complicated discussions of the conservation status of some species.

Ciscoes have been exploited in commercial fisheries, particularly in the Laurentian Great Lakes where the deepwater forms were the basis of the so-called chub fishery. The chub fishery had nothing to do with the various cyprinid fish species known as chubs but was exclusively based on the various species of ciscoes. The fishery continued as cisco stocks fell and non-native species such as sea lamprey, rainbow smelt and alewife spread through the system and increased in abundance. Alewife, in particular, have been implicated as a predator of cisco eggs and larvae, and as a competitor with ciscoes. The fishery shifted focus from species to species as cisco numbers declined and has been largely defunct for some years.