Epigenetic patterns in Atlantic herring (<i>Clupea harengus</i>): Temperature and photoperiod as environmental stressors during larval development

Kho, J.; Delgado, M. L.; McCracken, G. R.; Munden, J.; Ruzzante, D. E.

doi:10.1111/mec.17187

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Temperature has a particularly strong influence on the physiology of early life stages of marine species which, due to physiological constrains and high mortality during this phase, are particularly sensitive to thermal conditions (Dahlke et al., 2020; Marr, 1956). Indeed, temperature has been shown to also have a strong influence on the epigenome of Atlantic herring larvae by affecting DNA methylation patterns (Kho et al., 2023). Thus, temperature, or associated factors, may constitute an important selective pressure for herring larvae.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation to seasonal reproduction and environment‐associated factors drive temporal and spatial differentiation in northwest Atlantic herring despite gene flow

Fuentes‐Pardo,

Stanley,

Bourne

et al. 2024

Evolutionary Applications

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Understanding how marine organisms adapt to local environments is crucial for predicting how populations will respond to global climate change. The genomic basis, environmental factors and evolutionary processes involved in local adaptation are however not well understood. Here we use Atlantic herring, an abundant, migratory and widely distributed marine fish with substantial genomic resources, as a model organism to evaluate local adaptation. We examined genomic variation and its correlation with environmental variables across a broad environmental gradient, for 15 spawning aggregations in Atlantic Canada and the United States. We then compared our results with available genomic data of northeast Atlantic populations. We confirmed that population structure lies in a fraction of the genome including likely adaptive genetic variants of functional importance. We discovered 10 highly differentiated genomic regions distributed across four chromosomes. Nine regions show strong association with seasonal reproduction. One region, corresponding to a known inversion on chromosome 12, underlies a latitudinal pattern discriminating populations north and south of a biogeographic transition zone on the Scotian Shelf. Genome–environment associations indicate that winter seawater temperature best correlates with the latitudinal pattern of this inversion. The variation at two so‐called ‘islands of divergence’ related to seasonal reproduction appear to be private to the northwest Atlantic. Populations in the northwest and northeast Atlantic share variation at four of these divergent regions, simultaneously displaying significant diversity in haplotype composition at another four regions, which includes an undescribed structural variant approximately 7.7 Mb long on chromosome 8. Our results suggest that the timing and geographic location of spawning and early development may be under diverse selective pressures related to allelic fitness across environments. Our study highlights the role of genomic architecture, ancestral haplotypes and selection in maintaining adaptive divergence in species with large population sizes and presumably high gene flow.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%