Genomic analysis of species identity and hybridization within a species complex of Salvelinus (Pisces: Salmonidae) in western North America ...

• Main Author: Liu, Di Amy
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2022
• Subjects: Arctic; Salvelinus alpinus; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0412648; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0412648

Hybrid zones, where diverged lineages meet and interbreed, are often exploited to study natural mechanisms associated with varying stages of speciation. My thesis focuses on the western North American Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus), bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus), and Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma), described as a “species complex” due to their close inter-relationships, variable morphology, and tendency to hybridize. These aspects have caused debate over their taxonomic and physical identification. Furthermore, a recent subspecies contact zone between northern Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma malma, NDV) and southern Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma lordi, SDV), including an admixed population in the Chignik Lake watershed of southwestern Alaska, was recently described. Little is known about the hybrid composition, the effects of ecological selection on proportion of ancestry, and the resulting genomic landscape of this population. In my first chapter, I developed TaqMan assays for efficient, ...