AQUATIC HOUSING TO STUDY THE ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION OF FISHES AT THE BAMFIELD MARINE SCIENCES CENTRE

了解生物是如何与环境紧密联系在一起的，以及这对群落的影响，代表了生态学和进化的一个基本目标。适应是一种由自然选择驱动的进化变化的遗传过程，导致生物体非常适应其环境。我们的研究使用了一种小型鱼类，三刺鱼，来测试这些问题。我们通过使用实验（普通花园和互惠移植）和分子方法（遗传作图和基因表达）来测试对环境变化的适应是由于遗传变化的假设，这些方法可以分离和研究控制这些性状的基因。我们研究了环境变化是否在适应当地环境的种群基因组上留下了自然选择的印记，了解了在适应环境变化的过程中，哪些基因和性状成为了自然选择的目标。实现这些目标将有助于更好地预测生物体如何进化以应对自然界快速的环境变化。

Understanding how organisms are so tightly associated with their environments, and the impact this has on communities, represents a fundamental objective of ecology and evolution. Adaptation is a genetic process of evolutionary change, driven by natural selection, resulting in organisms that are well suited to their environment. Our research uses populations of a small fish species, the threespine stickleback, to test these questions. We test hypotheses that adaptation to environmental change is due to genetic changes through the use of experiments (common garden and reciprocal transplants) and molecular methods (genetic mapping and gene expression) that can isolate and study the genes that control these traits. We examine if changes in the environment leave a signature of natural selection on the genomes of locally adapted populations, learning what genes and traits have been the target of natural selection during adaptation to environmental change. Achieving these objectives will lead to better predictions of how organisms evolve in response to rapid environmental changes in nature.