The evolution of antipredator behaviour following relaxed and reversed selection in Alaskan threespine stickleback fish.

ABSTRACT: Changing environments, whether through natural or anthropogenic causes, can lead to the loss of some selective pressures ('relaxed selection') and possibly even the reinstatement of selective agents not encountered for many generations ('reversed selection'). We examined the outcome of relaxed and reversed selection in the adaptive radiation of the threespine stickleback fish, Gasterostues aculeatus L., in which isolated populations encounter a variety of predation regimes. Oceanic stickleback, which represent the ancestral founders of the freshwater radiation, encounter many piscivorous fish. Derived, freshwater populations, on the other hand, vary with respect to the presence of predators. Some populations encounter native salmonids, whereas others have not experienced predation b

SUBMITTER: Wund MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4528399 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature