Aquatic ecology axis

Current ecosystem impact assessment and restoration practices are based on ecology, and they do not integrate evolutionary principles for understanding the interplay between ecology and evolution that could be important for the outcome of ecosystem restoration projects in nature. We are quantifying the extent to which evolutionary processes impact lake ecology during ecosystem restoration by evaluating the effects of evolutionarily divergent fish introductions on aquatic biodiversity, lake ecosystem processes, and the predictability of subsequent phenotypic evolution and its effects on ecological differences. We will evaluate what ecological differences are most important for determining selection pressures on stickleback phenotypic evolution over several generations, and the subsequent influence of evolution-mediated differences in lake ecology on stickleback traits.