FRESHWATER FISHES
Salmonid fishes such as salmon, trout, and charr support commercially and recreationally valuable fisheries across the United States; however, these species are increasingly threatened by natural and anthropogenic drivers of environmental change, including dam barriers to movement, invasions of non-native species, and a changing global climate. Improved information on the relationship between genomic and environmental variation is necessary for understanding ecological and evolutionary processes affecting salmonid populations, and to identify management strategies that effectively mitigate contemporary threats to these species. I am addressing this knowledge gap using brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) native to the Lake Superior basin as a system in which to explore patterns of genomic and environmental variation in a landscape genomics framework. Below I provide examples of research questions relevant to this work.
What genomic and environmental mechanisms underlie ecologically important phenotypic variation?
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