Threespine Stickleback in Lake Constance: The Ecology and Genomic Substrate of a Recent Invasion

Hudson, Cameron M.; Lucek, Kay; Marques, David A.; Alexander, Timothy J.; Moosmann, Marvin; Spaak, Piet; Seehausen, Ole; Matthews, Blake (2021). Threespine Stickleback in Lake Constance: The Ecology and Genomic Substrate of a Recent Invasion. Frontiers in ecology and evolution, 8 Frontiers Media 10.3389/fevo.2020.611672

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Invasive species can be powerful models for studying contemporary evolution in natural
environments. As invading organisms often encounter new habitats during colonization,
they will experience novel selection pressures. Threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus
aculeatus complex) have recently colonized large parts of Switzerland and are invasive
in Lake Constance. Introduced to several watersheds roughly 150 years ago, they
spread across the Swiss Plateau (400–800m a.s.l.), bringing three divergent hitherto
allopatric lineages into secondary contact. As stickleback have colonized a variety
of different habitat types during this recent range expansion, the Swiss system is a
useful model for studying contemporary evolution with and without secondary contact.
For example, in the Lake Constance region there has been rapid phenotypic and
genetic divergence between a lake population and some stream populations. There is
considerable phenotypic variation within the lake population, with individuals foraging in
and occupying littoral, offshore pelagic, and profundal waters, the latter of which is a very
unusual habitat for stickleback. Furthermore, adults from the lake population can reach
up to three times the size of adults from the surrounding stream populations, and are
large by comparison to populations globally. Here, we review the historical origins of the
threespine stickleback in Switzerland, and the ecomorphological variation and genomic
basis of its invasion in Lake Constance. We also outline the potential ecological impacts
of this invasion, and highlight the interest for contemporary evolution studies.

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