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Salisbury, Sarah J.; McCracken, Gregory R.; Perry, Robert; Keefe, Donald; K. S. Layton, Kara; Kess, Tony; Nugent, Cameron M.; Leong, Jong S.; Bradbury, Ian R.; Koop, Ben F.; Ferguson, Moira M.; Ruzzante, Daniel E. — 2020-09-30 <p>The genetic underpinnings of incipient speciation, including the genomic mechanisms which contribute to morphological and ecological differentiation and reproductive isolation, remain poorly understood. The repeated evolution of consistently, phenotypically distinct morphs of Arctic Charr (<i>Salvelinus alpinus</i>) within the Quaternary period offer an ideal model to study the repeatability of evolution at the genomic level. Sympatric morphs of Arctic Charr are found across this species' circumpolar distribution. However, the specific genetic mechanisms driving this morph differentiation are largely unknown despite the cultural and economic importance of the anadromous morph. We used a newly designed 87k SNP chip to investigate the character and consistency of the genomic differences among sympatric morphs within three recently deglaciated and geographically proximate lakes in Labrador, Canada. We found genetically distinct small and large morph Arctic Charr in all three lakes consistent with resident and anadromous morphs, respectively. A degree of reproductive isolation among sympatric morphs is likely given genome-wide distributions of outlier SNPs and high genome-wide <i>F</i>_STs. Across all lakes, outlier SNPs were largely non-overlapping suggesting a lack of genetic parallelism driving morph differentiation. Alternatively, several genes and paralogous copies of the same gene consistently differentiated morphs across multiple lakes suggesting their importance to the manifestation of morphs. Our results confirm the utility of Arctic Charr as a model for investigating the predictability of evolution and support the importance of both genetic parallelism and non-parallelism to the incipient speciation of Arctic Charr morphs.</p>

K. S. Layton, Kara; Dempson, J. Brian; Snelgrove, Paul V.R.; Duffy, Steven J.; Messmer, Amber M.; Paterson, Ian; Jeffery, Nicholas W.; Kess, Tony; Horne, John B.; Salisbury, Sarah J.; Ruzzante, Daniel E.; Bentzen, Paul; Côté, David; Nugent, Cameron M.; Ferguson, Moira M.; Leong, Jong S.; Koop, Ben F.; Bradbury, Ian R. — 2020-01-17 <p>The resiliency of populations and species to environmental change is dependent on the maintenance of genetic diversity, and as such quantifying diversity is central to combatting ongoing wide spread reductions in biodiversity. With the advent of next-generation sequencing, several methods now exist for resolving fine-scale population structure, but the comparative performance of these methods for genetic assignment has rarely been tested. Here we evaluate the performance of sequenced microsatellites and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array to resolve fine-scale population structure in a critically important salmonid in northeastern Canada, Arctic charr (<i>Salvelinus alpinus</i>). We also assess the utility of sequenced microsatellites for fisheries applications by quantifying the spatial scales of movement and exploitation through genetic assignment of fishery samples to rivers of origin and comparing these results with a 29-year tagging dataset. Self-assignment and simulation-based analyses of 111 genome-wide microsatellite loci and 500 informative SNPs from 28 populations of Arctic charr in northeastern Canada identified largely river-specific genetic structure. Despite large differences (~4X) in the number of loci surveyed between panels, mean self-assignment accuracy was similar with the SNP panel and with the microsatellite loci (&gt;90%). Subsequent analysis of 996 fishery-collected samples using the microsatellite panel revealed that larger rivers contribute greater numbers of individuals to the fishery, and that coastal fisheries largely exploit individuals originating from nearby rivers, corroborating results from traditional tagging experiments. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of sequence-based microsatellite genotyping to advance understanding of fine-scale population structure and harvest composition in northern and understudied species.</p>