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Updated: Jun 28, 2025

Microinjection for Transgenesis and Genome Editing in Threespine Sticklebacks
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Parallel evolution despite low genetic diversity in three-spined sticklebacks.

Carla Coll-Costa1, Carolin Dahms2,3, Petri Kemppainen2,3

  • 1Ecological Genetics Research Unit, Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, FI-00014, Finland.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|April 9, 2024
PubMed
Summary

Southern European stickleback populations show lower genetic diversity but higher parallel evolution than northern ones. This suggests genetic diversity loss occurred after freshwater adaptation, explaining increased genetic parallelism.

Keywords:
Gasterosteus aculeatusadaptationgenetic diversityparallel evolution

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Population genetics
  • Ecology

Background:

  • Parallel evolution occurs when populations repeatedly adapt to similar environments using shared genetic mechanisms.
  • Demographic history, particularly standing genetic variation, influences the extent of parallel evolution.
  • The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a model organism for studying adaptation due to its repeated colonization of freshwater environments.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate genetic diversity and parallelism in southern versus northern European three-spined stickleback populations.
  • To test if southern freshwater populations exhibit reduced genetic diversity due to isolation and bottlenecks compared to northern populations.
  • To determine if genetic parallelism is higher in isolated southern populations than in connected northern populations.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of marine and freshwater populations of Gasterosteus aculeatus across southern and northern Europe.
  • Comparison of genetic diversity metrics between southern and northern populations.
  • Assessment of the degree of genetic parallelism in adaptation to freshwater environments.

Main Results:

  • Southern European freshwater stickleback populations displayed significantly lower genetic diversity than northern populations.
  • Despite lower diversity, southern populations exhibited a higher degree of genetic parallelism.
  • Northern populations, with maintained connectivity to marine sources, showed higher genetic diversity but less parallelism.

Conclusions:

  • Southern populations experienced genetic diversity loss, likely through bottlenecks and inbreeding, consistent with isolation.
  • The observed high genetic parallelism in southern populations suggests that genetic diversity was lost after freshwater adaptation.
  • Demographic history, specifically isolation and subsequent drift, plays a crucial role in shaping patterns of parallel evolution in Gasterosteus aculeatus.