Similarities in temperature-dependent gene expression plasticity across time-scales in threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Phenotypic plasticity occurs at a variety of time-scales, but little is known about the degree to which plastic responses at different time-scales are associated with similar underlying molecular processes, which is critical for assessing the effects of plasticity on evolutionary trajectories. To address this issue, we identified differential gene expression in response to developmental temperature in the muscle transcriptome of adult threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) exposed to 12, 18, and 24 °C until hatch and then held at 18 °C for nine months, and compared these results to differential gene expression in response to adult thermal acclimation in stickleback developed at 18 °C and then acclimated to 5 and 25 °C as adults. Adult thermal acclimation affected the expression of 7,940 and 7,015 genes in response to cold and warm acclimation, respectively, and 4,851 of these genes responded in both treatments. In contrast, the expression of only 33 and 29 genes were affected b...