Amount Awarded: $25,000
Domestication offers a valuable model for understanding the genetics of adaptation; however, many domestications are old, obscuring the early stages of this process, and occurred a limited number of times restricting the assessment of the repeatability of the selection response. In contrast, the domestication of salmonids has occurred recently and been repeated multiple times. Here we will use whole genome sequence data to detect signals of selection across four independent recent salmonid domestications. We will analyse three Atlantic salmon domestications initiated ~50 years ago (~12 generations) initiated from the divergent East and West Atlantic phylogeographical lineages and a rainbow trout domestication initiated ~150 years ago (~50 generations). Fifty individuals from each domestication will be sequenced to low coverage. We will employ analysis methods developed for low coverage sequence data and use the resulting genotypes to identify the targets of selection. Through these analyses, we will establish the repeatability of domestication selection, which we expect to have particularly targeted cognitive function and fear conditioning and to represent polygenic adaptation to a novel environment.