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Distinctive insular forms of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) from western Mediterranean islands

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Abstract

Neutral and adaptive variation among populations within a species is a major component of biological diversity and may be pronounced among insular populations due to geographical isolation and island specific evolutionary forces at work. Detecting and preserving potential evolutionary significant units below the species rank has become a crucial task for conservation biology. Combining genetic, phenotypic and ecological data, we investigated evolutionary patterns among the enigmatic threespine stickleback populations from western Mediterranean islands, all of which are threatened by habitat deterioration and climate change. We find indications that these populations derive from different genetic lineages, being genetically highly distinct from the stickleback of mainland Europe and the northern Atlantic as well as from each other. Mediterranean island stickleback populations are also phenotypically distinct from mainland populations but interestingly stickleback from Iceland have converged on a similar phenotype. This distinctive island stickleback phenotype seems to be driven by distinct selective regimes on islands versus continents. Overall, our results reveal the status of western Mediterranean island stickleback as evolutionarily distinct units, important for conservation of biodiversity.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by EAWAG action field project AquaDiverse to OS. KL was further supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc. Mobility grant P2BEP3_152103. We thank Miguel Hermida, Rafał Bernaś, Flavio Orrù and David Marques for providing specimens and Helmut Wellendorf from the Museum of Natural History in Vienna for his assistance in obtaining phenotypic data for Sardinian specimens. Mélissa Lemoine, Joana Meier, Víctor Soria-Carrasco and two anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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  1. Kay Lucek

    Present address: Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

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  1. Aquatic Ecology and Evolution, Institute of Ecology & Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse 6, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Kay Lucek & Ole Seehausen

  2. Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution, Center for Ecology, Evolution and Biogeochemistry, EAWAG Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, 6047, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland

    Kay Lucek & Ole Seehausen

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Fig. S1

Summary statistics for the individual based assignments using Structure: a) estimated likelihood for each run ± 1 SD; b) estimation of Delta K following Evanno et al. (2005). Supplementary material 1 (PDF 44 kb)

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Lucek, K., Seehausen, O. Distinctive insular forms of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) from western Mediterranean islands. Conserv Genet 16, 1319–1333 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-015-0742-0

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