Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Atlantic Cod are a long-lived species found in the north Atlantic Ocean. Individuals reach maturity in 2-7 years and spawn with rapid vertical movement that starts in deep water on the ocean bottom. Spawning usually occurs in late spring, but, depending on the location, spawning group, and biological conditions, can occur at any time of year. Eggs hatch into planktonic larvae that are suspended and travel in the water column for weeks, after settling as juveniles for the first 1-4 years of life in coasts and offshore banks $200 million for Canada. Genomic patterns of species indicate essential information about how populations are connected through migration and the adaptive potential of species to evolve in changing climates.To properly manage the species, it is essential to understand and separately consider the adaptive and neutral genetic differences. Only then can management be tailored to the genetic diversity and implemented at the proper spatial and temporal scales. Supergenes are at least two genes that are located in an area of reduced recombination, which allows multigene haplotypes to co-evolve. Classic examples of supergenes are those that encode for mimicry in butterflies, freshwater adaptation in three-spine stickleback, and plumage in birds. Four supergenes have been identified in Atlantic Cod and they are polymorphic on both sides of the Atlantic. Objectives:  The overarching long-term objective of my research program is to: Discover how genomes interact with ecological, evolutionary and phenotypic attributes of marine fishes in the western Atlantic Ocean. I will focus exclusively on Atlantic Cod with three short-term objectives: ?Objective 1: Develop high-throughput and economical genomic tools for Atlantic Cod. oTools developed: Genotyping in Thousands (GT-seq) panel of ~500 SNPs for population genomics and Taqman SNP assays for rapid genotyping of the 4 major chromosomal inversions. ?Objective 2: Discover phenotypes of Atlantic Cod supergenes. oQuestion addressed: What are the physiological and morphological functions of the 4 polymorphic supergenes in western Atlantic Cod? ?Objective 3: Understand temporal and spatial patterns of neutral and adaptive genomic variation of western Atlantic Cod. oQuestions addressed: To what extent does balancing selection, directional selection, and drift influence supergene genotype frequencies? What was the extent of gene flow among isolated management units before, during, and after the collapse?