Meeting Abstract
Investigating the mechanisms by which natural populations diverge to exploit new ecological resources remains of critical interest to evolutionary biologists. Evolutionary changes in behavior may be integral in initiating adaptive shifts, yet little is known about the microevolutionary changes in behavior that follow the invasion of new habitats. Threespine stickleback offer a unique opportunity to study microevolutionary variation in behavior and biomechanics due to their rapid, repeated invasion of freshwater habitats from a marine ancestor. Here we examine trophic and locomotor kinematics across five populations of threespine stickleback (4 freshwater and 1 marine). We further characterize their responses to both evasive and non-evasive prey, asking whether these populations exhibit significant behavioral plasticity in response to different prey types. We additionally ask whether these kinematics are integrated, and whether patterns of integration are similar among populations. Finally, we examine these traits in lab-raised fish from each population. We ask how these behaviors develop over time in fish as young as 9 days post fertilization through juvenile stages, and whether development differs among populations. Ultimately, we plan to connect this variation in biomechanics and integration to the underlying genetic architecture by performing a series of genetic mapping crosses between our marine and freshwater populations. This work will add to a growing body of literature investigating the genetic basis of behavioral variation, and will serve as a first step to understanding how biomechanical variation and plasticity evolve in a well-known adaptive radiation.
