Meeting Abstract
Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are some of the most prevalent pollutants because of their resistance to environment degradation and propensity to bioaccumulate. Moreover, POPs contribute significantly to human diseases. A population of the salt marsh teleost, Fundulus heteroclitus, inhabit New Bedford, Harbor, MA, a site highly contaminated with POPs, in particular polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Compared to nearby reference fish, the New Bedford Harbor fish are resistant to the PCBs in their environment. New Bedford Harbor exhibits a strong pollution cline with sediment concentrations of PCBs ranging from 22,666 ng/g dry weight at the source of pollution to 13 ng/g dry weight at the base of the harbor. Using genotyping by sequencing, we asked whether fish along this cline exhibit significant changes in genetic structure. Fish from five sites within the harbor and two flanking reference sites were genotyped at ~14,000 loci. When comparing fish from the most polluted New Bedford Harbor site to the clean reference populations, there were about 500 SNPs with evolutionary significant FST values (p < 0.01). We will examine the clinal variation in allele frequencies relative to PCB sediment concentrations. After controlling for demography, SNPs that have a change of allele frequency related to the clinal variation in PCB concentrations would indicate that those alleles are affected by PCB contamination and potentially linked to the New Bedford Harbor population’s tolerance to PCB toxicity.
