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Frequency of Ectodysplasin alleles and limited introgression between sympatric threespine stickleback populations

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Abstract

The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is primitively an anadromous or resident marine species but has repeatedly colonized fresh water, where predictable phenotypic divergence usually occurs rapidly. A conspicuous element of this divergence is change of the number and position of lateral armor plates from about 33 that cover the entire flank (complete) to <10 anterior plates (low). This difference is caused primarily by variation at the Ectodysplasin (Eda) locus. The low Eda allele appears to be rarer in two geographically adjacent anadromous populations from Cook Inlet, Alaska than in most marine or anadromous populations reported from elsewhere, and there is no evidence of elevated gene flow for Eda between anadromous and resident lake threespine stickleback populations that breed in sympatry. However, the two anadromous populations are divergent for the frequencies of two complete Eda alleles. It is not clear how monomorphic low-plated freshwater populations in Cook Inlet have almost invariably acquired ancestral low Eda alleles from anadromous ancestors in which this allele appears to be extremely rare.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M. Bobb, K. E. Ellis, P. J. Park, and A. Plaunova for field assistance, E. Hughes and A. Litewka for help with Eda genotyping, C. L. Peichel, J. Kitano, and D. Schluter for providing Eda frequencies from their studies, F.J. Rohlf for advice on calculating frequency limits for rare alleles, M. Fisher-Reid, X. Hua, D. Moen, K. Slovak, C. Ulloa, and J. Wiens for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and two anonymous reviewers for constructive criticism. Support to WEA from the W. Burghardt Turner Fellowship and Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate is gratefully acknowledged. Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant 52005887 to the Long Island Group Advancing Science Education (LIGASE) at Stony Brook University supported AB and AKG for this research, and several undergraduate assistants were supported by National Institutes of Health grant GM50070 to LIGASE. Field sampling was supported by National Science Foundation grants DEB0211391 and DEB0322818 to MAB and F. J. Rohlf. This is contribution 1203 from Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University.

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Author notes

  1. Anup K. Gangavalli

    Present address: School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-8430, USA

  2. Adam Bewick

    Present address: Department of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L8, Canada

  3. Windsor E. Aguirre

    Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, 60614, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-5245, USA

    Michael A. Bell, Anup K. Gangavalli, Adam Bewick & Windsor E. Aguirre

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  1. Michael A. Bell
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Correspondence to Michael A. Bell.

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Bell, M.A., Gangavalli, A.K., Bewick, A. et al. Frequency of Ectodysplasin alleles and limited introgression between sympatric threespine stickleback populations. Environ Biol Fish 89, 189–198 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-010-9712-z

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