Genetic parentage reveals the (un)natural history of Central Valley hatchery steelhead.

Populations composed of individuals descended from multiple distinct genetic lineages often feature significant differences in phenotypic frequencies. We considered hatchery production of steelhead, the migratory anadromous form of the salmonid species and investigated how differences among genetic lineages and environmental variation impacted life history traits. We genotyped 23,670 steelhead returning to the four California Central Valley hatcheries over 9 years from 2011 to 2019, confidently assigning parentage to 13,576 individuals to determine age and date of spawning and rates of iteroparity and repeat spawning within each year.

Distinct patterns of inheritance shape life-history traits in steelhead trout.

Life-history variation is the raw material of adaptation, and understanding its genetic and environmental underpinnings is key to designing effective conservation strategies. We used large-scale genetic pedigree reconstruction of anadromous steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) from the Russian River, CA, USA, to elucidate sex-specific patterns of life-history traits and their heritability. SNP data from adults returning from sea over a 14-year period were used to identify 13,474 parent-offspring trios.

Balancing selection maintains diversity in a cold tolerance gene in broadly distributed live oaks.

Cold poses major physiological challenges to plants, especially long-lived trees. In trees occurring along variable temperature clines, the expected direction and consequences of selection on cold acclimation ability and freezing tolerance are not straightforward. Here we estimated selection in cold acclimation genes at two evolutionary timescales in all seven species of the American live oaks (Quercus subsection Virentes).

Phylogeny and biogeography of the American live oaks (Quercus subsection Virentes): a genomic and population genetics approach.

The nature and timing of evolution of niche differentiation among closely related species remains an important question in ecology and evolution. The American live oak clade, Virentes, which spans the unglaciated temperate and tropical regions of North America and Mesoamerica, provides an instructive system in which to examine speciation and niche evolution. We generated a fossil-calibrated phylogeny of Virentes using RADseq data to estimate divergence times and used nuclear microsatellites, chloroplast sequences and an intron region of nitrate reductase (NIA-i3) to examine genetic diversity within species, rates of gene flow among species and ancestral population size of disjunct sister species.