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Abstract

We resurrect Catostomus tsiltcoosensis, the Tyee sucker of Oregon coastal rivers, from the synonymy of Catostomus macrocheilus and compare it with its congeners. Catostomus tsiltcoosensis is superficially similar to disjunctly distributed Catostomus occidentalis of the Sacramento drainage and Catostomus ardens of the Upper Snake River and Bonneville Basin. However, the gill raker structure, wide frontoparietal fontanelle, location of the ninth cranial foramen, scale radii patterns, and cytochrome b sequences clearly align C. tsiltcoosensis with C. macrocheilus rather than C. occidentalis. Differences in counts of infraorbital pores and dorsal fin rays, in body depth proportions, and in cytochrome b sequences distinguish C. tsiltcoosensis and C. macrocheilus. Within C. tsiltcoosensis, specimens from each of the 4 main drainages (north to south—Siuslaw, Umpqua, Coos, and Coquille) were reciprocally monophyletic based on cytochrome b data but showed no differences in the morphological features examined. Both C. tsiltcoosensis and another Oregon coastal taxon Catostomus rimiculus were paraphyletic based on cytochrome b. Although such discordant mitochondria results can be due to introgression, incomplete lineage sorting, and paralogy, other evidence suggests that introgression and lateral transfer of mitochondria explains the cytochrome b pattern in C. rimiculus. We speculate that lateral transfer might also be responsible for the pattern in C. tsiltcoosensis, except that the Coquille River population appears not to have been included in recent transfers.

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