Coregonus is a diverse genus of fish in the salmon family (Salmonidae). The Coregonus species are known as whitefishes. The genus contains at least 68 described extant taxa, but the true number of species is a matter of debate. The type species of the genus is Coregonus lavaretus. Most Coregonus species inhabit lakes and rivers, and several species, including the Arctic cisco (C. autumnalis), the Bering cisco (C. laurettae), and the least cisco (C. sardinella) are anadromous, moving between salt water and fresh water. Many whitefish species or ecotypes, especially from the Great Lakes and the Alpine lakes of Europe, have gone extinct over the past century or are endangered. Among 12 freshwater fish considered extinct in Europe, 6 are Coregonus. All Coregonus species are protected under appendix III of the Bern Convention. Taxonomy Phylogenetic evidence indicates that the most basal member of the genus is the highly endangered Atlantic whitefish (C. huntsmani), which is endemic to a single river basin in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Atlantic whitefish is thought to have diverged from the rest of the genus during the mid-Miocene, about 15 million years ago. The genus was previously subdivided into two subgenera Coregonus ("true whitefishes") and Leucichthys ("ciscoes"), Coregonus comprising taxa with sub-terminal mouth and usually a benthic feeding habit, Leucichthys those with terminal or supra-terminal mouth and usually a pelagic plankton-feeding habit. This classification is not natural however: based on molecular data, ciscoes comprise two distinct lineages within the genus. Moreover, the genus Stenodus is not phylogenetically distinct from Coregonus; although Stenodus occupies a basal position within the genus, phylogenetic evidence indicates that C. huntsmani is even more basal than it. Species diversity There is much uncertainty and confusion in the classification of the many of species of this genus. Particularly, one extreme view of diversity recognises just two main species in Northern and Central Europe, the common whitefish C. lavaretus and the vendace C. albula, whereas others would divide these into numerous, often narrowly distributed species. A drastic increase in number of recognized species occurred in 2007, when a review advocated that more than 50 local European populations should be considered as distinct based on morphological differences. It has been estimated that several of them are very young, having separated from each other less than 15,000 years ago. Many of these were primarily defined based on number of gill rakers. Although this largely is hereditary,