Data from: Cline coupling and uncoupling in a stickleback hybrid zone

However, strong ecological selection on a locus can also pull its cline away from the others, reducing linkage disequilibrium and weakening the barrier to gene flow. We looked for this ‘cline uncoupling’ effect in a hybrid zone between stream resident and anadromous sticklebacks at two genes known to be under divergent natural selection (Eda and ATP1a1) and five morphological traits that repeatedly evolve in freshwater stickleback.

These clines were all steep and located together at the top of the estuary, such that we found no evidence for cline uncoupling. However, we did not observe the stepped shape normally associated with steep concordant clines. It thus remains possible that these clines cluster together because their individual selection regimes are identical, but this would be very surprising given their diverse roles in osmoregulation, body armor and swimming performance.

Usage notes

SNP data The raw SNP data for the 15 genetic loci Bonsall_Morph_Gen_data A csv file containing the morphological and SNP data for all individuals CFit Input file An example CFit7 input file for the CFit analyses Vines et al Evolution R code The R code for the parts of the analysis that were carried out in R, and the code for making the figures. Vines et al Bonsall Creek Analysis An Excel spreadsheet containing preliminary analysis for the genetic data Vines et al Bonsall Creek Readme A readme for the Vines et al Bonsall Creek data files