Climate Induced Genetic and Phenotypic Change In a Population of Pink Salmon

There is substantial interest in how global change, especially warming, will impact salmonids and the degree to which salmonid populations may be able to adaptively respond to this warming.  Migration timing is a salmonid life history trait that is particularly likely to demonstrate rapid adaptation to climate change because it is generally highly heritable and closely associated with individual fitness.  Climate change is occurring very rapidly in Alaska and there have already been significant biological responses to climate warming. During the last 40 years, adult pink salmon have been migrating into Auke Creek, Alaska, significantly earlier.  Additionally, intra-annual variation in migration timing has significantly decreased.  The shift in the shape and central tendency of the migration timing distribution suggests a potential role for microevolution in response to natural selection.  We use nearly 30 years of genetic data, including candidate loci associated with migration timing, to help resolve whether there is a genetic signature of microevolution in response to selection on migration timing.  These data will help contribute to an increasingly important, though largely unaddressed, question in fisheries, conservation and evolutionary biology: can populations rapidly adapt via microevolution to an increasingly warm planet?