Evolution of phenology in a salmonid population: a potential adaptive response to climate change

Accumulating evidence has indicated that many fish populations are responding to climate change through shifts in migration time, but genetic data identifying the role of evolution in these shifts are rare. One of the first demonstrations of evolution of migration time was produced by monitoring all...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Manhard, Christopher V., Joyce, John E., Gharrett, Anthony J.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing) 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1807/77954
http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2017-0028
Description
Summary:Accumulating evidence has indicated that many fish populations are responding to climate change through shifts in migration time, but genetic data identifying the role of evolution in these shifts are rare. One of the first demonstrations of evolution of migration time was produced by monitoring allozyme alleles that were experimentally manipulated to genetically mark late-migrating pink salmon. Here, we extend that research by using observations of the marker alleles in fry to demonstrate that these changes in migration time were caused by directional selection against the late-migrating phenotype during the oceanic phase of the salmonid life cycle. The selective event, which appeared to be driven by early vernal warming of the nearshore marine environment and consequent decreased survival of late-migrating fry relative to early-migrating fry, decreased the late-migrating phenotype from more than 50% to approximately 10% of the total fry abundance in only one generation. These demographic changes have persisted over the subsequent thirteen generations and suggest that a larger trend toward earlier migration time in this population may reflect adaptation to warming sea-surface temperatures. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.