Northern pike (Esox lucius) have a Holarctic distribution. Where I live in North America, there are northern pike and muskellunge (Esox masquinongy), and the muskies get larger than the northern pike. Muskies actually approach the size of the largest northern pike in Europe. I grew up near one of West Virginia’s premiere muskie rivers, the Little Kanawha, and there were always muskie stories being told. There were stories of people being bitten as they dangled their hands over the edge of boats and of adult ducks being pulled under water by some unseen predator. I don’t know how many of these stories are true, but they always fascinated me. When you don’t live near an ocean, a good pike story is about the closest thing one can get to a shark story.
With two species of large pike, I guess we were always a bit more privileged than the poor Europeans. Even though their northern pike were larger than ours, they had only one species.
Well, now it appears that there are two species of European pike after all.
A recent study releases in PLoS ONE, found that southern European northern pike were actually very genetically and morphologically distinct. This study relied upon a comparison of two mtDNA loci, and it also used amplified fragment length polymorphism PCR to examine the genome of the fish.
It found that northern pike in Northern Europe were most closely related to those of Canada, but those of Italy were very distinct.
The northern pike in Northern Eurasia and North America would be very similar. It is this species that has the Holarctic distribution.
The Southern European species is endemic to Europe, just as the Muskellunge and the chain pickerel are endemic to North America.
Studies like these really can reveal exact taxonomic relationships. My only complaint about this study is that the authors decided to name the newly discovered pike “the southern pike” (Esox flaviae).
However, this is the name by which the chain pickerel is known. The chain pickerel (Esox niger) is one the lesser pike of North America. It is a smaller pike with a more southerly distribution than the large pike species.
Of course, common names in fish vary widely. Anglers in Europe won’t be catching chain pickerels, and those in North America won’t be catching these southern pike.
Pickerel can either refer to Esox lucius or Sander vitreus in Canada.
It gets confusing… better to call the former “pike” and the latter “walleye” for this reason.
Haven’t tasted a Sauger yet.
Messed up my HTML tags. Crap.
I have had saugeye– the hybrid between walleye and sauger.
We have two species that are called “chain pickerel”– one is the same species as the redfin pickerel and the other is the species called “southern pike.”
Want to make things more confusing?
In some parts of the South, gars are called gar-pike!
I think it just messed the format up on publishing.
I can’t fix it on my end.
Normally, I can.
I much prefer calling these fish by their genus, Esox. There are five native species of Esox in North America.
The big ones, Northern Pike, esox lucius and Muskellunge, esox masquinongy.
The medium sized, Chain Pickerel, Esox Niger.
And the small, Esox americanus americans, Redfin pickerel, which is found in the east and Esox americanus vermiculatus, Grass pickerel, which is found a bit further west.
Caught on appropriate sized tackle, all give a good fight.