Origin of the Laurentian Great Lakes fish fauna through upward adaptive radiation cascade prior to the Last Glacial Maximum

Nathan J.C. Backenstose; Daniel J. MacGuigan; Christopher A. Osborne; Moises A. Bernal; Elizabeth K. Thomas; Eric Normandeau; Daniel Yule; Wendylee Stott; Amanda Susanne Ackiss; Victor A. Albert; Louis Bernatchez; Trevor J.  Krabbenhoft

doi:10.1038/s42003-024-06503-z

Origin of the Laurentian Great Lakes fish fauna through upward adaptive radiation cascade prior to the Last Glacial Maximum

Communications Biology

By: Nathan J.C. Backenstose, Daniel J. MacGuigan, Christopher A. Osborne, Moises A. Bernal, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Eric Normandeau, Daniel Yule, Wendylee Stott, Amanda Susanne Ackiss, Victor A. Albert, Louis Bernatchez, and Trevor J. Krabbenhoft

https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06503-z

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Abstract

The evolutionary histories of adaptive radiations can be marked by dramatic demographic fluctuations. However, the demographic histories of ecologically-linked co-diversifying lineages remain understudied. The Laurentian Great Lakes provide a unique system of two such radiations that are dispersed across depth gradients with a predator-prey relationship. We show that the North American Coregonus species complex (“ciscoes”) radiated rapidly prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (80–90 kya), a globally warm period, followed by rapid expansion in population size. Similar patterns of demographic expansion were observed in the predator species, Lake Charr (Salvelinus namaycush), following a brief time lag, which we hypothesize was driven by predator-prey dynamics. Diversification of prey into deep water created ecological opportunities for the predators, facilitating their demographic expansion, which is consistent with an upward adaptive radiation cascade. This study provides a new timeline and environmental context for the origin of the Laurentian Great Lakes fish fauna, and firmly establishes this system as drivers of ecological diversification and rapid speciation through cyclical glaciation.

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Additional publication details
Publication type	Article
Publication Subtype	Journal Article
Title	Origin of the Laurentian Great Lakes fish fauna through upward adaptive radiation cascade prior to the Last Glacial Maximum
Series title	Communications Biology
DOI	10.1038/s42003-024-06503-z
Volume	7
Year Published	2024
Language	English
Publisher	Nature
Contributing office(s)	Great Lakes Science Center
Description	978, 10 p.
Other Geospatial	Laurentian Great Lakes
Google Analytic Metrics	Metrics page