Data from: Evolution of stickleback in 50 years on earthquake-uplifted islands

On several Alaskan islands, phenotypically variable threespine stickleback fish now live in ponds that were formed during uplift caused by the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake. We analyzed phenotypic and genome-wide genetic divergence of resident freshwater and oceanic threespine stickleback populations from three islands. These data support the hypothesis that the freshwater populations evolved repeatedly from their oceanic ancestors in the past half-century, and have differentiated to nearly the same extent as populations that were founded thousands of years ago. This work raises the possibility that much of the evolution that occurs when oceanic stickleback invade fresh water takes place in fewer than 50 generations after colonization, rather than gradually over thousands of years.

在数个阿拉斯加岛屿上，具有表型变异的三棘刺鱼（threespine stickleback）如今栖息于1964年阿拉斯加大地震引发地壳抬升所形成的池塘中。本研究分析了来自三个岛屿的淡水定居三棘刺鱼种群与海洋种群的表型及全基因组遗传分化。研究数据支持如下假说：在过去半个世纪中，淡水种群多次独立起源于其海洋祖先类群，且其遗传分化程度已近乎达到数千年前形成的种群水平。本研究提示，海洋刺鱼入侵淡水环境并完成定殖后所发生的多数演化过程，可能仅需不足50代的时间即可完成，而非历经数千年的渐进式演化。