Ecological causes of morphological evolution in the three-spined stickleback
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Date
06/2013Keywords
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Abstract
The central assumption of evolutionary theory is that natural selection drives the adaptation of populations to local environmental conditions, resulting in the evolution of adaptive phenotypes. The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) displays remarkable phenotypic variation, offering an unusually tractable model for understanding the ecological mechanisms underpinning adaptive evolutionary change. Using populations on North Uist, Scotland we investigated the role of predation pressure and calcium limitation on the adaptive evolution of stickleback morphology and behavior. Dissolved calcium was a significant predictor of plate and spine morph, while predator abundance was not. Stickleback latency to emerge from a refuge varied with morph, with populations with highly reduced plates and spines and high predation risk less bold. Our findings support strong directional selection in three-spined stickleback evolution, driven by multiple selective agents.
Citation
Spence , R G A , Wootton , R J , Barber , I , Przybylski , M & Smith , C 2013 , ' Ecological causes of morphological evolution in the three-spined stickleback ' , Ecology and Evolution , vol. 3 , no. 6 , pp. 1717-1726 . https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.581
Publication
Ecology and Evolution
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2045-7758Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2013 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium
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