Evolution of growth by genetic accommodation in Icelandic freshwater stickleback.

ABSTRACT: Classical Darwinian adaptation to a change in environment can ensue when selection favours beneficial genetic variation. How plastic trait responses to new conditions affect this process depends on how plasticity reveals to selection the influence of genotype on phenotype. Genetic accommodation theory predicts that evolutionary rate may sharply increase when a new environment induces plastic responses and selects on sufficient genetic variation in those responses to produce an immediate evolutionary response, but natural examples are rare. In Iceland, marine threespine stickleback that have colonized freshwater habitats have evolved more rapid individual growth. Heritable variation in growth is greater for marine full-siblings reared at low versus high salinity, and genetic variation exist

SUBMITTER: Robinson BW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3813338 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature