Data From: Evaluating the correlation between genome-wide diversity and the release of plastic phenotypic variation in experimental translocations to novel natural environments

Phenotypic reaction norms are often shaped and constrained by selection and are important for allowing organisms to respond to environmental change. However, selection cannot constrain reaction norms for environmental conditions that populations have not experienced. This may allow cryptic neutral genetic variation for the reaction norm to accumulate such that a release of phenotypic variation occurs when it is exposed to novel conditions. Most genomic diversity behaves as if functionally neutral. Genome-wide diversity metrics may therefore correlate with levels of cryptic genetic variation and, as a result, could exhibit a positive relationship with a release of phenotypic variation in novel environments. To test this hypothesis, we conducted translocations of juvenile brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) from 12 populations to novel uninhabited ponds that represented a gradient of environmental conditions. We assessed reaction norms for morphological traits (body size and four morphome...