Landscape Genomics Group

Evolutionary ecology of coexisting stickleback species

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Part of the capacity of a species to respond to environmental change depends on its evolutionary potential, which is rooted in the amount and structure of adaptive genetic variation. We previously showed that two coexisting and closely related fishes – three-spined and nine-spined stickleback – differ markedly in the strength and nature of local adaptation between brackish water and freshwater populations. This indicates that both species cope with landscape-level ecological heterogeneity in fundamentally different ways. We aim to improve  our overall understanding of how adaptation is achieved in both species at the genetic, regulatory and epigenetic level.

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Collaborators:

Thijs Mattheus Peter Bal

Kostas Sagonas

Joost Raeymaekers

Filip Volckaert

Io Deflem

Federico Calboli

Christophe Eizaguirre

Doko Miles Jackson Thorburn

Pascal Hablützel

Anurag Chaturvedi

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