Two new species of Atlantic trout (Actinopterygii, Salmonidae) from Morocco

Four trout species of the genus Salmo Linnaeus, 1758 have been traditionally recognized in Morocco: S. macrostigma Duméril, 1858; S. pallaryi Pellegrin, 1924; S. pellegrini Werner, 1931 and S. akairos Delling & Doadrio, 2005. Two of these species are mainly distributed in Mediterranean (S. macrostigma) and Atlantic (S. pellegrini) river basins while the other two species are restricted to isolated lakes in the Atlas Mountains, one of them to Ifni Lake (S. akairos) and the other, probably extinct, to Sidi Ali Lake (S. pallaryi). Preliminary phylogenetic and regional studies based on molecular data have found high structuration of the populations of this genus in Morocco. These studies focused on allozymes, microsatellites and mitochondrial markers found genetic differences in populations from Isli Lake (Atlas Mountains) and the Draa Basin in southern Morocco. In this work we provide different morphological and genetic traits to distinguish these populations from Isli Lake and Draa Basin as two different species.