Parallel evolution of Pitx1 underlies pelvic reduction in Scottish threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Abstract

Little is known about the genetic and molecular mechanisms that underlie adaptive phenotypic variation in natural populations or whether similar genetic and molecular mechanisms are utilized when similar adaptive phenotypes arise in independent populations. The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a good model system to investigate these questions because these fish display a large amount of adaptive phenotypic variation, and similar adaptive phenotypes have arisen in multiple, independent stickleback populations. A particularly striking pattern of parallel evolution in sticklebacks is reduction of skeletal armor, which has occurred in numerous freshwater locations around the world. New genetic and genomic tools for the threespine stickleback have made it possible to identify genes that underlie loss of different elements of the skeletal armor. Previous work has shown that regulatory mutations at the Pitx1 locus are likely responsible for loss of the pelvic structures in independent stickleback populations from North America and Iceland. Here we show that the Pitx1 locus is also likely to underlie pelvic reduction in a Scottish population of threespine stickleback, which has apparently evolved pelvic reduction under a different selection regime than the North American populations.