A Few Stickleback Suffice for the Transport of Alleles to New Lakes
Threespine stickleback populations provide a striking example of local adaptation to divergent habitats in populations that are connected by recurrent gene flow. In this paper we use individual-based, spatially explicit simulations to determine the levels of gene flow that best match observed patterns of allele sharing among habitats in stickleback. We find that repeated adaptation uses a shared set of alleles that are maintained at low frequency by migration-selection balance in oceanic populations. Surprisingly, we find that the genealogical origins of most freshwater adapted alleles can be traced back to the original generation of marine individuals that colonized the lakes, as opposed to subsequent migrants.