The Beauty Tf Trout
The beauty tf trout I"", can be described The color patterns are caused by variations as fusiform-shaped, soft-rayed fishes with a in skin pigments. These pigments in the cells terminal mouth, which is to say that they reflect light, particularly red, yelloq orange. have a body shaped like a dart, fins with brown, and black, to produce the trout's ex- flexible spines, and a mouth in which neither ternal colors. Some ofthese cells, called chro the upper nor the lower jaw extends. But the matophores, contain more than one type of most obvious and the most pleasing feature is pigment, and some pigments can move in their coloration. the cytoplasm of the cell to produce changes The brown trout and the western trouts in colors. The more spectacular colors, blue (cutthroat, rainbow, golden, Mexican for example, are produced in special reflecting golden, Apache, and Gila trout) have a pat- chromatophores called iridophores. Small, tern of darker spots against a lighter back- flat structures within the iridophores reflect ground. The chars (brook, bull, and lake these unusual colors. These chromatophores trout; Arctic and Dolly Varden char) gener- and iridophores provide the principal sources ally have a white leading edge on the anal and of color and occur at many locations in the pelvic fins and a pattern of lighter-colored skin as well as elsewhere in the body, the spots against a darker background. Beyond eyes, for example. When individual fishes un- basic spottingpatterns, various colors may be dergo color changes, there is a migration of present. For example, brook trout have spots pigment within the chromatophores to with blue aureoles; brown trout have faint create vivid concentrations of color on the halos around dark spots.
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