Variation in female life-history traits among Alaskan populations of the threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus L. (Pisces: Gasterosteidae)

Life-history characteristics of female threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) were examined in 12 populations, 11 freshwater and one anadromous, within the Cook Inlet region of Alaska. Because this area has been deglaciated during the last 20 000 years, the freshwater populations are recently derived, probably independendy, from the local marine or anadromous stickleback. Freshwater threespine stickleback have undergone considerable morphological evolution within this region, apparently in response to environmental factors including predatory regimes and environmental productivity. Our freshwater study populations were selected to sample this range of morphological variation in order to determine whether life-history traits and morphologies have followed similar evolutionary trajectories. Freshwater populations could be categorized generally into one of three ecomorphotypes: those inhabiting relatively productive lakes having one or more piscivorous fishes present, and in which the stickleback exhibit a fully developed pelvic girdle; those inhabiting low-calcium lakes that lack piscivorous fishes, and in which the pelvic structures are incomplete; those living in streams with piscivorous fishes, in which the stickleback have fully developed pelvic girdles. The anadromous population constituted a fourth ecomorphotype that lives in marine waters, and is robusdy armored. The freshwater populations showed considerable variation in all life-history traits assessed, and this variation generally corresponded to our ecomorphological classifications. Nevertheless, within each ecomorphotype there was sufficient variation to suggest that morphological and life-history traits may not always respond in the same manner in response to the same selective regime.     

Microgeographical diversification of threespine stickleback: body shape–habitat correlations in a small, ecologically diverse Alaskan drainage

Adaptive radiations are a major source of evolutionary diversity in nature, and understanding how they originate and how organisms diversify during the early stages of adaptive radiation is a major problem in evolutionary biology. The relationship between habitat type and body shape variation was investigated in a postglacial radiation of threespine stickleback in the upper Fish Creek drainage of Cook Inlet, Alaska. Although small, the upper Fish Creek drainage includes ecologically diverse lakes and streams in close proximity to one another that harbour abundant stickleback. Specimens from ancestral anadromous and derived resident freshwater populations differed substantially and could be distinguished by body shape alone, suggesting that the initial stages of adaptation contribute disproportionately to evolutionary divergence. Body shape divergence among resident freshwater populations was also considerable, and phenotypic distances among samples from freshwater populations were associated with habitat type but not geographical distance. As expected, stream stickleback from slow-moving, structurally complex environments tended to have the deepest bodies, stickleback from lakes with a mostly benthic habitat were similar but less extreme, and stickleback from lakes with a mostly limnetic habitat were the most shallow-bodied, elongate fish. Beyond adapting rapidly to conditions in freshwater environments, stickleback can diversify rapidly over small geographical scales in freshwater systems despite opportunities for gene flow. This study highlights the importance of ecological heterogeneity over small geographical scales for evolutionary diversification during the early stages of adaptive radiation, and lays the foundation for future research on this ecologically diverse, postglacial system.  © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 2009, 98 , 139–151.     

Rapid Morphological Changes in Threespine Stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, in Freshwater

Synopsis Freshwater and marine threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, differ remarkably in armour plate number and body shape, although differences in other morphological characters are also common. Most freshwater populations have apparently evolved after isolation of marine sticklebacks in freshwater. After colonisation of freshwater habitats, they show rapid morphological changes and associated genetic isolation within as few as eight generations. I transferred fish from marine tide pools to two isolated freshwater ponds, differing in habitat characteristics, at the beginning of the breeding season, when females had ripe ovaries and males had breeding coloration. The first generation fish that I sampled from the ponds had significantly fewer armour plates than their marine ancestors and differed in shape. I also found some significant differences between fish sampled from the larger pond and those from a smaller, adjacent pond. This extremely rapid morphological divergence suggests that either the marine sticklebacks were highly phenotypically plastic or that there was very strong natural selection acting on the first generation within freshwater habitats.     

Allometric relationships in morphological traits associated with foraging,swimming ability,and predator defense reveal adaptations toward brackish and freshwater environments in the threespine stickleback

Freshwater colonization by threespine stickleback has led to divergence in morphology between ancestral marine and derived freshwater populations, making them ideal for studying natural selection on phenotypes. In an open brackish–freshwater system, we previously discovered two genetically distinct stickleback populations that also differ in geometric shape: one mainly found in the brackish water lagoon and one throughout the freshwater system. As shape and size are not perfectly correlated, the aim of this study was to identify the morphological trait(s) that separated the populations in geometric shape. We measured 23 phenotypes likely to be important for foraging, swimming capacity, and defense against predation. The lateral plate morphs in freshwater displayed few significant changes in trait sizes, but the low plated expressed feeding traits more associated with benthic habitats. When comparing the completely plated genetically assigned populations, the freshwater, the hybrids, the migrants and the lagoon fish, many of the linear traits had different slopes and intercepts in trait‐size regressions, precluding our ability to directly compare all traits simultaneously, which most likely results from low variation in body length for the lagoon and migrant population. We found the lagoon stickleback population to be more specialized toward the littoral zone, displaying benthic traits such as large, deep bodies with smaller eyes compared to the freshwater completely plated morph. Further, the lagoon and migrant fish had an overall higher body coverage of lateral plates compared to freshwater fish, and the dorsal and pelvic spines were longer. Evolutionary constraints due to allometric scaling relationships could explain the observed, overall restricted, differences in morphology between the sticklebacks in this study, as most traits have diversified in common allometric trajectories. The observed differences in foraging and antipredation traits between the fish with a lagoon and freshwater genetic signature are likely a result of genetic or plastic adaptations toward brackish and freshwater environments.     

Intraguild predation leads to genetically based character shifts in the threespine stickleback

Intraguild predation is a common ecological interaction that occurs when a species preys upon another species with which it competes. The interaction is potentially a mechanism of divergence between intraguild prey (IG‐prey) populations, but it is unknown if cases of character shifts in IG‐prey are an environmental or evolutionary response. We investigated the genetic basis and inducibility of character shifts in threespine stickleback from lakes with and without prickly sculpin, a benthic intraguild predator (IG‐predator). Wild populations of stickleback sympatric with sculpin repeatedly show greater defensive armor and water column height preference. We laboratory‐raised stickleback from lakes with and without sculpin, as well as marine stickleback, and found that differences between populations in armor, body shape, and behavior persisted in a common garden. Within the common garden, we raised stickleback half‐families from multiple populations in the presence and absence of sculpin. Although the presence of sculpin induced trait changes in the marine stickleback, we did not observe an induced response in the freshwater stickleback. Behavioral and morphological trait differences between freshwater populations thus have a genetic basis and suggest an evolutionary response to intraguild predation.     

Should I stay or should I go? The Ectodysplasin locus is associated with behavioural differences in threespine stickleback

Adaptive divergence may be facilitated if morphological and behavioural traits associated with local adaptation share the same genetic basis. It is therefore important to determine whether genes underlying adaptive morphological traits are associated with variation in behaviour in natural populations. Positive selection on low-armour alleles at the Ectodysplasin (Eda) locus in threespine stickleback has led to the repeated evolution of reduced armour, following freshwater colonization by fully armoured marine sticklebacks. This adaptive divergence in armour between marine and freshwater populations would be facilitated if the low allele conferred a behavioural preference for freshwater environments. We experimentally tested whether the low allele is associated with preference for freshwater by measuring the preference of each Eda genotype for freshwater versus saltwater after acclimation to either salinity. We found no association between the Eda low allele and preference for freshwater. Instead, the low allele was significantly associated with a reduced preference for the acclimation environment. This behaviour may facilitate the colonization of freshwater habitats from the sea, but could also hinder local adaptation by promoting migration of low alleles between marine and freshwater environments.     

Variation of telencephalon morphology of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) in relation to inferred ecology

We tested the hypothesis that increased telencephalon size has evolved in threespine stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) from structurally complex habitats using field‐caught samples from one sea‐run (ancestral) and 18 ecologically diverse freshwater (descendant) populations. Freshwater habitats ranged from shallow, structurally complex lakes with benthic‐foraging stickleback (benthics), to deeper, structurally simple lakes in which stickleback depend more heavily on plankton for prey (generalists). Contrary to our expectations, benthics had smaller telencephala than generalists, but the shape of the telencephalon of the sea‐run and benthic populations were more convex laterally. Convex telencephalon shape may indicate enlargement of the dorsolateral region, which is homologous with the tetrapod hippocampus. Telencephalon morphology is also sexually dimorphic, with larger, less convex telencephala in males. Freshwater stickleback from structurally complex habitats have retained the ancestral telencephalon morphology, but populations that feed more in open habitats on plankton have evolved larger, laterally concave telencephala.     

Adaptation and constraint in a stickleback radiation

The evolution of threespine sticklebacks in freshwater lakes constitutes a well‐studied example of a phenotypic radiation that has produced numerous instances of parallel evolution, but the exact selective agents that drive these changes are not yet fully understood. We present a comparative study across 74 freshwater populations of threespine stickleback in Norway to test whether evolutionary changes in stickleback morphology are consistent with adaptations to physical parameters such as lake depth, lake area, lake perimeter and shoreline complexity, variables thought to reflect different habitats and feeding niches. Only weak indications of adaptation were found. Instead, populations seem to have diversified in phenotypic directions consistent with allometric scaling relationships. This indicates that evolutionary constraints may have played a role in structuring phenotypic variation across freshwater populations of stickleback. We also tested whether the number of lateral plates evolved in response to lake calcium levels, but found no evidence for this hypothesis.     

Phenotypic divergence among threespine stickleback that differ in nuptial coloration

By studying systems in their earliest stages of differentiation, we can learn about the evolutionary forces acting within and among populations and how those forces could contribute to reproductive isolation. Such an understanding would help us to better discern and predict how selection leads to the maintenance of multiple morphs within a species, rather than speciation. The postglacial adaptive radiation of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is one of the best‐studied cases of evolutionary diversification and rapid, repeated speciation. Following deglaciation, marine stickleback have continually invaded freshwater habitats across the northern hemisphere and established resident populations that diverged innumerable times from their oceanic ancestors. Independent freshwater colonization events have yielded broadly parallel patterns of morphological differences in freshwater and marine stickleback. However, there is also much phenotypic diversity within and among freshwater populations. We studied a lesser‐known freshwater “species pair” found in southwest Washington, where male stickleback in numerous locations have lost the ancestral red sexual signal and instead develop black nuptial coloration. We measured phenotypic variation in a suite of traits across sites where red and black stickleback do not overlap in distribution and at one site where they historically co‐occurred. We found substantial phenotypic divergence between red and black morphs in noncolor traits including shape and lateral plating, and additionally find evidence that supports the hypothesis of sensory drive as the mechanism responsible for the evolutionary switch in color from red to black. A newly described third “mixed” morph in Connor Creek, Washington, differs in head shape and size from the red and black morphs, and we suggest that their characteristics are most consistent with hybridization between anadromous and freshwater stickleback. These results lay the foundation for future investigation of the underlying genetic basis of this phenotypic divergence as well as the evolutionary processes that may drive, maintain, or limit divergence among morphs.     

Postglacial intra-lacustrine divergence of Icelandic threespine stickleback morphs in three neovolcanic lakes

The geographical context of divergence and local adaptation of lacustrine fish is controversial. Despite recent theoretical support for sympatric and parapatric divergence, empirical studies providing unequivocal support for this remain scant. An important component of such a case would be where multiple lakes have different morphs and a range of markers, both mitochondrial and nuclear, show monophyly within lakes. Here we describe such a situation for threespine sticklebacks in three lakes in Iceland. By analysing the variation at nuclear and mitochondrial markers in several freshwater and marine populations as well as three pairs of intra-lacustrine morphs we infer their phylogenetic relationships and colonization pattern. There were high levels of microsatellite variation in all populations and no evidence was found for either repeated colonization of marine fish or colonization from distinct glacial refugia. Intra-lacustrine threespine stickleback morphs in all three lakes show significant genetic divergence probably indicating restricted gene flow.     

Genomic signatures of the plateless phenotype in the threespine stickleback

Understanding the genetic basis of traits involved in adaptive divergence and speciation is one of the most fundamental objectives in evolutionary biology. Toward that end, we look for signatures of extreme plate loss in the genome of freshwater threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Plateless stickleback have been found in only a few lakes and streams across the world; they represent the far extreme of a phenotypic continuum (plate number) that has been studied for years, although plateless individuals have not yet been the subject of much investigation. We use a dense single nucleotide polymorphism dataset made using RADseq to study fish from three freshwater populations containing plateless and low plated individuals, as well as fish from full plated marine populations. Analyses were performed using FastStructure, sliding windows F_ST, Bayescan and latent factor mixed models to search for genomic differences between the low plated and plateless phenotypes both within and among the three lakes. At least 18 genomic regions which may contribute to within‐morph plate number variation were detected in our low plated stickleback populations. We see no evidence of a selective sweep between low and plateless fish; rather reduction of plate number within the low plated morph seems to be polygenic.     

Chromosomal Fusions Facilitate Adaptation to Divergent Environments in Threespine Stickleback

Chromosomal fusions are hypothesized to facilitate adaptation to divergent environments, both by bringing together previously unlinked adaptive alleles and by creating regions of low recombination that facilitate the linkage of adaptive alleles; but, there is little empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. Here, we address this knowledge gap by studying threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), in which ancestral marine fish have repeatedly adapted to freshwater across the northern hemisphere. By comparing the threespine and ninespine stickleback (Pungitius pungitius) genomes to a de novo assembly of the fourspine stickleback (Apeltes quadracus) and an outgroup species, we find two chromosomal fusion events involving the same chromosomes have occurred independently in the threespine and ninespine stickleback lineages. On the fused chromosomes in threespine stickleback, we find an enrichment of quantitative trait loci underlying traits that contribute to marine versus freshwater adaptation. By comparing whole-genome sequences of freshwater and marine threespine stickleback populations, we also find an enrichment of regions under divergent selection on these two fused chromosomes. There is elevated genetic diversity within regions under selection in the freshwater population, consistent with a simulation study showing that gene flow can increase diversity in genomic regions associated with local adaptation and our demographic models showing gene flow between the marine and freshwater populations. Integrating our results with previous studies, we propose that these fusions created regions of low recombination that enabled the formation of adaptative clusters, thereby facilitating freshwater adaptation in the face of recurrent gene flow between marine and freshwater threespine sticklebacks.     

Parallel evolution of Pitx1 underlies pelvic reduction in Scottish threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Little is known about the genetic and molecular mechanisms that underlie adaptive phenotypic variation in natural populations or whether similar genetic and molecular mechanisms are utilized when similar adaptive phenotypes arise in independent populations. The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a good model system to investigate these questions because these fish display a large amount of adaptive phenotypic variation, and similar adaptive phenotypes have arisen in multiple, independent stickleback populations. A particularly striking pattern of parallel evolution in sticklebacks is reduction of skeletal armor, which has occurred in numerous freshwater locations around the world. New genetic and genomic tools for the threespine stickleback have made it possible to identify genes that underlie loss of different elements of the skeletal armor. Previous work has shown that regulatory mutations at the Pitx1 locus are likely responsible for loss of the pelvic structures in independent stickleback populations from North America and Iceland. Here we show that the Pitx1 locus is also likely to underlie pelvic reduction in a Scottish population of threespine stickleback, which has apparently evolved pelvic reduction under a different selection regime than the North American populations.     

Small Changes in Gene Expression of Targeted Osmoregulatory Genes When Exposing Marine and Freshwater Threespine Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) to Abrupt Salinity Transfers

Salinity is one of the key factors that affects metabolism, survival and distribution of fish species, as all fish osmoregulate and euryhaline fish maintain osmotic differences between their extracellular fluid and either freshwater or seawater. The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a euryhaline species with populations in both marine and freshwater environments, where the physiological and genomic basis for salinity tolerance adaptation is not fully understood. Therefore, our main objective in this study was to investigate gene expression of three targeted osmoregulatory genes (Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase (ATPA13), cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) and a voltage gated potassium channel gene (KCNH4) and one stress related heat shock protein gene (HSP70)) in gill tissue from marine and freshwater populations when exposed to non-native salinity for periods ranging from five minutes to three weeks. Overall, the targeted genes showed highly plastic expression profiles, in addition the expression of ATP1A3 was slightly higher in saltwater adapted fish and KCNH4 and HSP70 had slightly higher expression in freshwater. As no pronounced changes were observed in the expression profiles of the targeted genes, this indicates that the osmoregulatory apparatuses of both the marine and landlocked freshwater stickleback population have not been environmentally canalized, but are able to respond plastically to abrupt salinity challenges.     

Evolution of growth by genetic accommodation in Icelandic freshwater stickleback

Classical Darwinian adaptation to a change in environment can ensue when selection favours beneficial genetic variation. How plastic trait responses to new conditions affect this process depends on how plasticity reveals to selection the influence of genotype on phenotype. Genetic accommodation theory predicts that evolutionary rate may sharply increase when a new environment induces plastic responses and selects on sufficient genetic variation in those responses to produce an immediate evolutionary response, but natural examples are rare. In Iceland, marine threespine stickleback that have colonized freshwater habitats have evolved more rapid individual growth. Heritable variation in growth is greater for marine full-siblings reared at low versus high salinity, and genetic variation exists in plastic growth responses to low salinity. In fish from recently founded freshwater populations reared at low salinity, the plastic response was strongly correlated with growth. Plasticity and growth were not correlated in full-siblings reared at high salinity nor in marine fish at either salinity. In well-adapted lake populations, rapid growth evolved jointly with stronger plastic responses to low salinity and the persistence of strong plastic responses indicates that growth is not genetically assimilated. Thus, beneficial plastic growth responses to low salinity have both guided and evolved along with rapid growth as stickleback adapted to freshwater.     

Systemic iridovirus from threespine stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus represents a new megalocytivirus species (family Iridoviridae)

Megalocytiviruses have been associated with epizootics resulting in significant economic losses in public aquaria and food-fish and ornamental fish industries, as well as threatening wild fish stocks. The present report describes characteristics of the first megalocytivirus from a wild temperate North American fish, the threespine stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus. Moribund and dead fish sampled after transfer to quarantine for an aquarium exhibit had amphophilic to basophilic intracytoplasmic inclusions (histopathology) and icosahedral virions (transmission electron microscopy) consistent with an iridovirus infection. Phylogenetic analyses of the major capsid, ATPase, and DNA polymerase genes confirmed the virus as the first known member of the genus Megalocytivirus (family Iridoviridae) from a gasterosteid fish. The unique biologic and genetic properties of this virus are sufficient to establish a new Megalocytivirus species to be formally known as the threespine stickleback iridovirus (TSIV). The threespine stickleback is widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere in both freshwater and estuarine environments. The presence of megalocytiviruses with broad host specificity and detrimental economic and ecologic impacts among such a widely dispersed fish species indicates the need for sampling of other stickleback populations as well as other North American sympatric marine and freshwater ichthyofauna.     

Evolutionary diversification of opercle shape in Cook Inlet threespine stickleback

We investigated the evolution of a large facial bone, the opercle (OP), in lake populations of the threespine stickleback that were founded by anadromous ancestors, in Cook Inlet, Alaska. Recent studies characterized OP variation among marine and lake populations and mapped a quantitative trait locus with a large influence on OP shape. Using populations from diverse environments and independent evolutionary histories, we examined divergence of OP shape from that of the anadromous ancestor. We report preliminary evidence for divergence between benthic and generalist lake ecotypes, necessitating further investigation. Furthermore, rapid divergence of OP shape has occurred in a lake population that was founded by anadromous stickleback in the 1980s, which is consistent with divergence of other phenotypic traits and with OP diversification in other lake populations. By contrast, there has been limited evolution of OP shape in a second lake population that may have experienced a genetic bottleneck early in its history and lacks genetic variation for OP divergence. Taken together, the results obtained from these two populations are consistent with studies of other stickleback phenotypic traits that implicate ancestral variation in postglacial adaptive radiation of threespine stickleback in fresh water.  © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 2009, 97 , 832–844.     

Genetic and morphometric divergence in threespine stickleback in the Chignik catchment,Alaska

Divergent selection pressures induced by different environmental conditions typically lead to variation in life history, behavior, and morphology. When populations are locally adapted to their current environment, selection may limit movement into novel sites, leading to neutral and adaptive genetic divergence in allopatric populations. Subsequently, divergence can be reinforced by development of pre‐ or postzygotic barriers to gene flow. The threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is a primarily marine fish that has invaded freshwater repeatedly in postglacial times. After invasion, the established freshwater populations typically show rapid diversification of several traits as they become reproductively isolated from their ancestral marine population. In this study, we examine the genetic and morphometric differentiation between sticklebacks living in an open system comprising a brackish water lagoon, two freshwater lakes, and connecting rivers. By applying a set of microsatellite markers, we disentangled the genetic relationship of the individuals across the diverse environments and identified two genetic populations: one associated with brackish and the other with the freshwater environments. The “brackish” sticklebacks were larger and had a different body shape than those in freshwater. However, we found evidence for upstream migration from the brackish lagoon into the freshwater environments, as fish that were genetically and morphometrically similar to the lagoon fish were found in all freshwater sampling sites. Regardless, few F1‐hybrids were identified, and it therefore appears that some pre‐ and/or postzygotic barriers to gene flow rather than geographic distance are causing the divergence in this system.     

Gene expression plasticity evolves in response to colonization of freshwater lakes in threespine stickleback

Phenotypic plasticity is predicted to facilitate individual survival and/or evolve in response to novel environments. Plasticity that facilitates survival should both permit colonization and act as a buffer against further evolution, with contemporary and derived forms predicted to be similarly plastic for a suite of traits. On the other hand, given the importance of plasticity in maintaining internal homeostasis, derived populations that encounter greater environmental heterogeneity should evolve greater plasticity. We tested the evolutionary significance of phenotypic plasticity in coastal British Columbian postglacial populations of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) that evolved under greater seasonal extremes in temperature after invading freshwater lakes from the sea. Two ancestral (contemporary marine) and two derived (contemporary freshwater) populations of stickleback were raised near their thermal tolerance extremes, 7 and 22 °C. Gene expression plasticity was estimated for more than 14 000 genes. Over five thousand genes were similarly plastic in marine and freshwater stickleback, but freshwater populations exhibited significantly more genes with plastic expression than marine populations. Furthermore, several of the loci shown to exhibit gene expression plasticity have been previously implicated in the adaptive evolution of freshwater populations, including a gene involved in mitochondrial regulation (PPARAa). Collectively, these data provide molecular evidence that highlights the importance of plasticity in colonization and adaptation to new environments.