Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Canada is home to myriad fish species that have important commercial, recreational, and cultural value. Human activities such as habitat alteration and climate change are already threatening this important resource, and these effects are only going to intensify into the future. The objective of Dr. Schulte’s research program is to understand the mechanisms that make species, or individuals within a species, vulnerable or resilient to environmental change. This work provides the scientific knowledge needed to develop appropriate conservation and mitigation strategies that will help preserve Canada’s fish resources into the future. Dr. Schulte’s research program is highly integrative, starting from fundamental mechanistic studies in genomics, epigenomics, biochemistry and physiology and using this information to understand the factors that influence variation in the performance and fitness of fish in the face of environmental change. This innovative integrative approach allows her research group to gain insight into mechanisms underlying phenotypic plasticity and adaptive variation in resilience to environmental change in fish. Her research is divided across three inter-related themes. Her first research theme examines the epigenetic mechanisms that underlie phenotypic plasticity, or the ability of an organism to alter its phenotype without changing its genotype. Phenotypic plasticity can act as a buffer against environmental change, but it also has limits. Dr. Schulte uses a range of cutting-edge approaches to identify the epigenetic mechanisms that facilitate this plasticity, and identifies their limits. The second main theme of Dr. Schulte’s research is to understand how genetic differences among individuals or species contribute to differences in resilience to environmental change. She uses whole-genome sequencing technologies to identify genetic variation within and between fish species across the entire genome, and then makes the links between this variation and variation in tolerance of environmental change. In her third research theme, Dr. Schulte takes the knowledge gained from the fundamental research performed in the first two themes and applies it in a practical and solutions-oriented framework to improve the effectiveness of conservation hatcheries to support wild fish populations and to increase the efficiency, sustainability, and resilience of aquaculture operations and reduce pressures on wild fish.