PARALLEL EVOLUTION BY CORRELATED RESPONSE: LATERAL PLATE REDUCTION IN THREESPINE STICKLEBACK

Parallel evolution by correlated response: lateral plate reduction in threespine stickleback.

Recent work has revealed the molecular mechanisms governing one of the most dramatic examples of parallel evolution in nature: the repeated loss of lateral plate armor in freshwater populations of threespine stickleback. Yet, the ecological mechanisms responsible for armor loss remain unclear. Using a balanced experimental design, we examined Heuts' (1947) hypothesis that selection due to diffe...

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 larg...

Salinity-induced phenotypic plasticity in lateral bony plate number of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Discriminating selection on lateral plate phenotype and its underlying gene, Ectodysplasin, in threespine stickleback.

When a signature of natural selection is discovered on a gene that is pleiotropic or in tight linkage with other genes, it is challenging to determine which of the affected phenotypes is under selection. One way to make progress is to employ methods for analyzing natural selection on correlated traits, including both genotype and phenotype. We used this approach in threespine stickleback to est...

Heritability of Asymmetry and Lateral Plate Number in the Threespine Stickleback

The estimation of individual fitness and quality are important elements of evolutionary ecological research. Over the past six decades, there has been great interest in using fluctuating asymmetry (FA) to represent individual quality, yet, serious technical problems have hampered efforts to estimate the heritability of FA, which, in turn, has limited progress in the investigation of FA from an ...