Fossil And Recent Mountain Suckers, Pantosteus, And Significance Of Introgression In Catostomin Fishes Of Western United States

Abstract

Catostomus is the most diverse genus of fishes in western North America. Over thirty species of Catostomus and other catostomins have been classified in five recent genera, Catostomus, Deltistes, Chasmistes, Xyrauchen, and Pantosteus. Introgressed evolutionary history is apparent in all five western catostomin genera. Mountain suckers, subgenus Pantosteus, are small and medium-sized fishes that live in moderate-gradient streams in the foothills and mountains, from the Black Hills to Pacific coastal drainages and from western Canada to central Mexico. Pantosteus is distinct in its molecular as well as morphological traits, but it is polyphyletic because Catostomus (Pantosteus) columbianus shares unique, derived morphological traits with Pantosteus and mtDNA with Catostomus (s.s.), thereby identifying two genera in its ancestry. We recognize three subgroups of Pantosteus: C. (P.) discobolus group of six species is distributed in the Snake River, eastern and southern Basin and Range Province to central Mexico, the Colorado Plateau, and the Los Angeles Basin. The C. (P.) platyrhynchus species group consists of four species, found in the Columbia, Snake, Upper Missouri, Upper Green, Lahontan, and Bonneville basins. Catostomus (P.) columbianus is a separate subgroup. The Pantosteus fossil record is sparse. We describe three Miocene records of the C. (P.) discobolus group from Oregon and Washington, three Pliocene species from Idaho and Nevada, and two Pleistocene records--from the Rio Grande rift in Colorado and from the Missouri River drainage of Kansas. The Kansas record suggests a much wider range for the species during glacial periods. Miocene relatives of C. (P.) discobolus from three sites in Oregon and Washington, 11.5-8.5 million years old, are morphologically advanced suckers. The Pliocene species from southern Nevada is intermediate between its modern relatives in the surrounding Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. At least one of the two Pliocene mountain suckers in the Snake River drainage was probably involved in the hybrid ancestry of C. (P.) columbianus. The general Pantosteus pattern suggests an origin in the northwest Great Basin and Columbia Plateau, with a history of dispersal, isolation, and evolution southward through Basin and Range drainages to the Colorado Plateau and Mexico, and eastward across the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri drainage. Mountain suckers are adapted to moderate-gradient mountain streams and to scraping food from rocky substrate.