Dissertation Research: Evolvability of Sensory Systems in the Bluefin Killifish, Lucania goodei

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Travis0073896This project will discern the evolutionary lability of the visual system in the bluefin killifish. Males exhibit one of several different color patterns. Lighting conditions (e.g. water clarity, tree cover) are good predictors of the relative abundance of male color morphs within a population. Because these color patterns are used in signaling females, the visual system might vary among populations so that it mitigates the color schemes used by males in each population. This project will quantify the pattern of variation in vision physiology across populations with different lighting regimes and the amount of variation within populations attributable to genetics, environment, and their interactions. Experiments will be performed which examine the effect of male color patterns on animal behavior and the response of vision physiology to artificial selection. The ultimate objective of this study is to determine whether natural selection can act on sensory systems or whether sensory systems are invariant (and, therefore acts as a constraint to natural selection). This question is central to many debates in biology (e.g. evolution of senescence, genome size, plasticity). If physiology can readily respond to selection, predictions can be made as to what should happen to populations over time with models involving few constraints due to a lack of genetic variation. If, however, physiology is invariant, then these constraints must be incorporated into our models - potentially resulting in drastically different predictions.