Sympatric Speciation in Threespine Stickleback: Why Not?
Figure 1
Illustration of the evidence for phenotypic and diet variation, phenotype-diet correlation, disruptive selection, and assortative mating in stickleback. (a) Phenotypic variation in gill raker length within a population of stickleback (First Lake, 2008; [22]). (b) Diet variation within a population of stickleback (First Lake, 2008; [22]) indicated by the high variance in carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios δ 13C and δ 15N compared to the variance observed when individuals all consume the same set of prey (thick cross over the centroid represents ±2 s.d., based on lab-raised stickleback [23]). Adjusting for baseline isotopic variation (thin arrow indicates a benthic primary consumer [snails], thick arrow represents a planktivorous primary consumer [mussels]), individual stickleback fall anywhere from 0% to 100% benthic carbon. Because of the correlation between δ 13C and δ 15N, the first isotopic principal component axis can be used to represent the axis from benthic to limnetic diets. (c) Phenotypic and diet variation are correlated: fish with longer gill rakers tend to consume a more limnetic diet (high values of isotopic PC1 indicate lower δ 13C, higher δ 15N; First Lake). (d) Assortative mating by diet, indicated by a positive correlation between males' isotopic signature and the isotopes from eggs (indicative of female diet; modified from [23]). (e) A key measure of trophic morphology, gill raker length, is subject to disruptive selection as indicated by a significant quadratic coefficient in a regression of growth rate on size-standardized gill raker length. (First Lake, 2005; modified from [24]). Growth rate was measured using a biochemical index, the ratio of RNA to DNA in muscle tissue. The relationships in each panel of this figure are repeatable across multiple solitary lake populations.
