Collaborative Research: Adaptability of a Key Arctic Freshwater Species to Climate Change

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TITLE: Adaptability of a key Arctic freshwater fish to climate changeRapidly changing climates uniquely challenge Arctic fish that rely on interconnected, seasonally available habitat. The Arctic grayling migrates annually between breeding sites in streams and unfrozen overwintering habitat. Their movement is restricted to a small number of interconnecting waterways. Warmer climates are creating dry streambeds when fish need to migrate to winter habitat. Warmer streams could challenge fish adapted to cooler water. Substantial movement, plasticity, or adaptive genetic variation might allow for resilience to these stressors. This study proposes to study populations from three representative Arctic streams that differ in temperature, connectivity, and sensitivity to climate change. Pilot data indicate increasing drying events that threaten the grayling?s return to overwintering sites as well as substantial population structure among and within watersheds. Species can respond to climate change through movement, phenotypic plasticity, or local adaptive evolution. Most research fails to address one or more of these fundamental strategies, and these gaps currently limit our ability to predict future responses with accuracy. This study addresses all three strategies to understand the persistence of a key Arctic species. The researchers will address five broader impact areas: 1) expanding opportunities for undergraduate and graduate study, including promoting opportunities for minority involvement of native Alaskans; 2) building upon existing links between Arctic research field crews and K-12 educators in the lower 48 states; 3) broadening scientific understanding in Arctic minority communities, including residents in Barrow, AK and initiating new outreach to Anaktuvuk, AK; 4) enhancing public education via governmental outreach, media relations, and publicly accessible web resources; and 5) expanding cooperation with state and federal agencies in developing management recommendations for Arctic fish.This study will 1) assay movement at four time scales ranging from days to centuries; 2) evaluate plasticity and adaptive differentiation among populations; 3) assess populations for loci under selection; and 4) determine natural selection against grayling subpopulations by integrating data on selected loci with the movement of individually tagged fish. This study will test how watershed characteristics influence movement patterns using individual tagging, otolith micro-chemistry, and genomics. Individual tagging records fine-scale daily movement, otolith micro-chemistry allows the reconstruction of lifetime movement patterns, and genomic data reveals recent and historical movement across the landscape and genes under selection. Lastly, this study will quantify genetic and environmental contributions to performance of fish from divergent environments.