"Chromosomes and genes, spawned these fateful scenes": Rapid adaptation in an introduced fish.

Abstract

Humans by their very nature alter the distribution of species. Be it introduction of exotic species, habitat alterations or construction of barriers, anthropogenic changes provide novel experimental systems for the molecular ecologist to study evolutionary change. These events often provide a contradiction. Effective population sizes are generally low, and introduced populations are typically characterized by reduced diversity consistent with theoretical predictions of population bottlenecks and founder effects. However, despite reduced diversity, rapid change sometimes occurs. Identification of genomic regions associated with these rapid adaptive responses to novel selection pressures provides a window into genomic regions important in adaptive diversity, both in the novel and native ranges. These studies also provide an important means to estimate the pace of evolutionary change. In this issue, Willoughby etal. () compared the heterozygosity of steelhead (the anadromous form of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss) introduced into Lake Michigan in the late 1880s to the putative source population from the ancestral California range. After 25 generations of isolation in Lake Michigan, Willoughby etal. () found consistent genomewide reductions in genetic diversity as estimated by a measure of pooled heterozygosity. Despite this overall reduction in heterozygosity, three chromosomal regions showed signals of rapid adaptation and contained genes associated with osmoregulatory and wound-healing functions.