Presented By: Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR)
Great Lakes Seminar Series: Amanda Ackiss
Harnessing genomics to characterize diversity in Great Lakes ciscoes across space and time
About the presentation:
At the end of the Pleistocene, many salmonid fishes in the subfamily Coregoninae rapidly diversified in newly available freshwater habitats across the northern hemisphere. In terms of evolutionary time, these species flocks are incredibly young, and many instances of diversification appear to have occurred in sympatry rather than allopatry, leading to incomplete lineage sorting. The difficulty disentangling species relationships in this subfamily has been termed the ‘coregonine problem’ and has severely limited the ability of scientists and managers to draw robust conclusions regarding best practices for their conservation and restoration. This is particularly vital in the Laurentian Great Lakes, where overfishing, habitat degradation, and the introduction of invasive species in the 20th century led to precipitous declines in the largest documented radiation of coregonines in North America, the Coregonus artedi species complex. Many of these impacts have been mitigated in recent decades, and interest in restoring lost populations of these important prey fishes is growing, calling for a better understanding of relationships between members of this species complex. In this talk, I will discuss how we are leveraging new genomic tools to elucidate historic and contemporary differentiation and to explore the mechanisms of divergence in the Great Lakes C. artedi species complex in support of on-going conservation and restoration efforts.
About the speaker:
Amanda Ackiss is a Fish Biologist at the US Geological Survey’s Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, MI. She earned her B.A. in Media Studies at the University of Virginia before pivoting back to the field of science and earning her Ph.D. in Ecological Sciences at Old Dominion University. During her Ph.D. she gained expertise in molecular ecology, genomics, and bioinformatics studying the diversity of fishes in the Coral Triangle region of southeast Asia before accepting a postdoctoral research position at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point that introduced her to the cisco species complex of the Great Lakes. Amanda’s lab at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center now focuses on applied genomics at the interface of speciation and spatial ecology to support bi-national coregonine conservation and restoration efforts.
At the end of the Pleistocene, many salmonid fishes in the subfamily Coregoninae rapidly diversified in newly available freshwater habitats across the northern hemisphere. In terms of evolutionary time, these species flocks are incredibly young, and many instances of diversification appear to have occurred in sympatry rather than allopatry, leading to incomplete lineage sorting. The difficulty disentangling species relationships in this subfamily has been termed the ‘coregonine problem’ and has severely limited the ability of scientists and managers to draw robust conclusions regarding best practices for their conservation and restoration. This is particularly vital in the Laurentian Great Lakes, where overfishing, habitat degradation, and the introduction of invasive species in the 20th century led to precipitous declines in the largest documented radiation of coregonines in North America, the Coregonus artedi species complex. Many of these impacts have been mitigated in recent decades, and interest in restoring lost populations of these important prey fishes is growing, calling for a better understanding of relationships between members of this species complex. In this talk, I will discuss how we are leveraging new genomic tools to elucidate historic and contemporary differentiation and to explore the mechanisms of divergence in the Great Lakes C. artedi species complex in support of on-going conservation and restoration efforts.
About the speaker:
Amanda Ackiss is a Fish Biologist at the US Geological Survey’s Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, MI. She earned her B.A. in Media Studies at the University of Virginia before pivoting back to the field of science and earning her Ph.D. in Ecological Sciences at Old Dominion University. During her Ph.D. she gained expertise in molecular ecology, genomics, and bioinformatics studying the diversity of fishes in the Coral Triangle region of southeast Asia before accepting a postdoctoral research position at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point that introduced her to the cisco species complex of the Great Lakes. Amanda’s lab at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center now focuses on applied genomics at the interface of speciation and spatial ecology to support bi-national coregonine conservation and restoration efforts.
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