Climate adaptation in Atlantic salmon
Evidence suggests that salmon can adapt to warmer temperatures, but there are upper limits to this capacity that depend on both environmental and genetic factors. The ability to adapt to warmer temperatures varies across salmon populations, suggesting some populations may be more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
To understand and predict the effects of climate change on salmon in freshwater, experimental approaches combined with genomic and transcriptomic tools are needed to characterize different mechanisms that enable adaptation to warmer temperatures
Our project uses lab- and field-based experiments coupled with genomic and transcriptomic approaches to measure variation in temperature adaptation across populations of Atlantic salmon. Our work will help identify genes and mechanisms involved in temperature adaptation, and build on current forecasting methods to understand and predict the effects of climate change on salmon across a large spatial scale. This project is funded by NSERC and DFO.
In addition to our work on the impacts of climate change on Atlantic salmon, I co-lead the 'Aquatic and Coastal Ecosystems' Work Package for the inter-departmental project on Genomic Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change (GenARCC) that focuses on wide variety of taxa and ecosystems.
Genomic approaches for conservation and management
As a member of COSEWIC and a co-author on the COSEWIC Status Report for Atlantic Salmon, I am interested in how we can use genomic data to inform conservation units. In Canada, conservation units are defined by COSEWIC as discrete and evolutionarily significant units known as 'Designatable Units' (DUs).
Using Atlantic salmon as a case study, we provide a framework for defining conservation units that uses a weight of evidence of approach and incorporates genetic, genomic, and other data sources.
This work is published in Evolutionary Applications:
Finfish aquaculture applications and interactions
As a graduate student, a large part of my research focused on applications to aquaculture, from identifying the genomic basis of important commercial traits like flesh pigmentation in salmon to evaluating the potential impacts of escaping salmon to wild populations. This research occurred in collaboration with Yellow Island Aquaculture Ltd.
I continue to work on projects related to potential impacts of aquaculture interactions, including a graduate student project on the effects of climate change and aquaculture introgression on wild salmon populations. I am actively involved in providing science advice on potential impacts of finfish aquaculture on wild populations through the CSAS process.
