Rutilus, commonly known as roaches, is a genus of freshwater Actinopterygii belonging to the family Leuciscidae, which includes the daces, Eurasian minnows and related fishes. This genus is a widely distributed lineage of leuciscids and ranges from West Europe to East Siberia.
Taxonomy
Rutilus was first proposed as a genus in 1820 by the French
polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque with
Cyprinus rutilus designated as the
type species but also the type species by absolute
tautonymy.
was first formally described in the 10th edition of
Systema Naturae by
Carl Linnaeus with "European lakes" given as the type locality.
In a phylogeography study, Levin et al. (2017) argue that the Ponto-Caspian taxa including R. caspicus, R. heckelii and R. stoumboudae could represent a single widespread species whose range extends to Siberia, to be named Rutilus lacustris, whereas R. kutum is included in R. frisii.
[Levin, B.A., Simonov, E.P., Ermakov, O.A., Levina, M.A., Interesova, E.A., Kovalchuk, O.M., Malinina, Y.A., Mamilov, N.S., Mustafayev, N.J., Pilin, D.V., Pozdeev, I.V., Prostakov, N.I., Roubenyan, H.R., Titov, S.V. & Vekhov, D.A. (2017): Phylogeny and phylogeography of the roaches, genus Rutilus (Cyprinidae), at the Eastern part of its range as inferred from mtDNA analysis. Hydrobiologia, 788 (1): 33–46.]
The genera Leucos and Sarmarutilus have been recently separated from Rutilus and are closely related to it.
Etymology
Rutilus was chosen as the genus name by
Tautonym with
Cyprinus rutilus;
rutilus means red, golden red or reddish yellow, and is an allusion to the red colour of the fins.
Species
Rutilus contains the following valid species:
-
Rutilus atropatenus Derjavin, 1937 (Azerbaijani spring roach)
-
Rutilus caspicus (Yakovlev, 1870) (Caspian roach)
-
Rutilus frisii (Nordmann, 1840) (Black Sea roach)
-
Rutilus heckelii (Nordmann, 1840)
-
Rutilus kutum (Kamensky, 1901) (Kutum)
-
Rutilus lacustris (Pallas, 1814) (Pontic roach)
-
Rutilus meidingeri (Heckel, 1851) (Pearlfish)
-
Rutilus pigus (Lacepède, 1803) (Pigo)
-
Rutilus rutilus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Common roach)
-
Rutilus sojuchbulagi Abdurakhmanov, 1950 (Akstafa spring roach)
-
Rutilus virgo (Heckel, 1852) (Cactus roach)
Characteristics
Rutilus, according to Rafinesque, was characterised by "
Vent posterior nearer to the tail. Abdominal fins with nine rays. Mouth large and with lips. Scales large."
The smallest species in the genus is
R. atropatenus with a maximum
total length of ,
while the largest are
R. frisii and
R. meidingeri with a maximum
total length of .
Distribution
Rutilus is a widely distributed genus of leuciscids and fishes from this genus are found from Western Europe to Eastern Siberia.
