Abteilung Fischökologie & Evolution

Nature Communications - Genomic architecture of adaptive radiation and hybridization in Alpine whitefish

4. August 2022

Rishi and many colleagues from our research group recently published one of his PhD chapters in Nature Communications. They address questions revolving around the roles of the genomic architecture and hybridization in the Alpine whitefish radiation, using a whole-genome dataset that includes multiple individuals of each of the 22 species belonging to six ecologically distinct ecomorph classes across several lake-systems.

The results reveal that repeated ecological and morphological diversification along a common environmental axis is associated with both genome-wide allele frequency shifts and a specific, larger effect, locus. They further highlight the role of introgression between species from different lake-systems in facilitating the evolution and persistence of species with unique trait combinations and ecology.