Testing the predictability of morphological evolution in contrasting thermal environments

Funding: The study was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council Grant (NE/N016734/1) awarded to K.J.P., N.B.M., S.S.K., and J.L. S.S.K. was supported by a NERC Advanced Fellowship (NE/J019100/1) and a European Research Council Starting Grant (640004). Gaining the ability to predict populatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolution
Main Authors: Pilakouta, Natalie, Humble, Joseph L., Hill, Iain D.C., Arthur, Jessica, Costa, Ana P.B., Smith, Bethany A., Kristjánsson, Bjarni K., Skúlason, Skúli, Killen, Shaun S., Lindström, Jan, Metcalfe, Neil B., Parsons, Kevin J.
Other Authors: University of St Andrews.School of Biology
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Climate change
Contemporary evolution
Geometric morphometrics
Gasterosteus aculeatus
Parallel evolution
Sympatric divergence
QL Zoology
GE Environmental Sciences
DAS
MCC
QL
GE
Iceland
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10023/31544
https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpac018
Description
Summary:Funding: The study was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council Grant (NE/N016734/1) awarded to K.J.P., N.B.M., S.S.K., and J.L. S.S.K. was supported by a NERC Advanced Fellowship (NE/J019100/1) and a European Research Council Starting Grant (640004). Gaining the ability to predict population responses to climate change is a pressing concern. Using a “natural experiment,” we show that testing for divergent evolution in wild populations from contrasting thermal environments provides a powerful approach, and likely an enhanced predictive power for responses to climate change. Specifically, we used a unique study system in Iceland, where freshwater populations of threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) are found in waters warmed by geothermal activity, adjacent to populations in ambient-temperature water. We focused on morphological traits across six pairs from warm and cold habitats. We found that fish from warm habitats tended to have a deeper mid-body, a subterminally orientated jaw, steeper craniofacial profile, and deeper caudal region relative to fish from cold habitats. Our common garden experiment showed that most of these differences were heritable. Population age did not appear to influence the magnitude or type of thermal divergence, but similar types of divergence between thermal habitats were more prevalent across allopatric than sympatric population pairs. These findings suggest that morphological divergence in response to thermal habitat, despite being relatively complex and multivariate, are predictable to a degree. Our data also suggest that the potential for migration of individuals between different thermal habitats may enhance nonparallel evolution and reduce our ability to predict responses to climate change. Peer reviewed

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