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Hypoxia drives plastic divergence in cichlid body shape

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Abstract

Organisms experience multiple selective agents that can influence phenotypes through heritable and/or plastic changes, often reflecting complex interactions between phenotype and environment. Environmental factors can directly influence phenotypes, but also indirectly affect phenotypic variation when genetic/plastic change in one trait results in correlated genetic/plastic change in another trait. In fishes, body shape is a trait that might be particularly prone to influence from environmental pressures that act on other morphological features. Variation in dissolved oxygen among aquatic environments has a large impact on the size of the gills and brains of fishes. It is likely that dissolved oxygen interacts with other environmental factors to both directly and indirectly influence patterns of body shape variation. We examined effects of dissolved oxygen on body shape variation among populations of an African cichlid fish (Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor) from multiple high- and low-oxygen sites within a single drainage in Uganda. A split-brood laboratory experiment was used to estimate plasticity of gill and brain size, and we used morphometric analyses to identify variation in body shape in F1 offspring. Several analyses enabled us to identify genetic effects among populations, and effects of oxygen acting either directly on body shape or indirectly through its effects on gill and brain size. A large part of the variation in body shape was due to plastic variation in gill size associated with dissolved oxygen. Fish raised under low oxygen had deeper heads and shorter bodies, and this variation was driven by both direct effects of oxygen and indirect effects of gill size variation. Body shape variation in fishes should reflect interacting effects of multiple environmental factors that act directly or indirectly on morphology. Body shape might be particularly difficult to predict when phenotypes are plastic, because changes among populations would occur rapidly and be unrelated to genetic variation.

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Acknowledgments

Field work was completed with the assistance of Emmanuel Aliganyira, Mery Martínez, Patrick Omeja, Jaclyn Paterson, Erin Raynard, Diana Sharpe, and Dennis Twinomugisha. Care of experimental animals was facilitated by Cesar Fuentes-Ortega, Lubov Grigoryeva, and Ruoqi Wang. We would like to thank Thomas DeWitt, Brian Langerhans, and Diana Sharpe for help with the geometric morphometric analysis. Thanks to Andrew Hendry for providing comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Funding was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (EC and LJC), the American Cichlid Association (EC), and Canada Research Chair funds (LJC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Ave. Dr. Penfield, Montréal, QC, H3A 1B1, Canada

    Erika Crispo & Lauren J. Chapman

  2. Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Blvd., Bronx, NY, 10460, USA

    Lauren J. Chapman

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  1. Erika Crispo
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  2. Lauren J. Chapman
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Correspondence to Erika Crispo.

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Crispo, E., Chapman, L.J. Hypoxia drives plastic divergence in cichlid body shape. Evol Ecol 25, 949–964 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-010-9445-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-010-9445-7

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