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Environmentally induced morphological variation in the temperate reef fish, Forsterygion lapillum (F. Tripterygiidae)

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Abstract

The study of phenotypic variation at the level of populations and species is central to understanding the processes that lead to evolutionary diversification. Triplefin fishes (Tripterygiidae) are a diverse and ecologically important family on New Zealand rocky reefs. This assemblage provides an opportunity to explore phenotype-environment relationships and the mechanisms responsible for the ecological speciation that is thought to have driven diversification in this clade. To test these relationships, we used two main approaches. Firstly, we used a geometric morphometric approach, and secondly, we used controlled rearing experiments in aquaria to examine the mechanism behind this phenotypic variation. The results showed that wild populations of the habitat generalist Forsterygion lapillum differed in body and fin morphology across a gradient in wave exposure in a region with extensive gene flow. Results of the tank experiments demonstrated that new recruits of F. lapillum from the same location that were raised in distinct water movement environments became morphologically distinct, whereas new recruits of F. lapillum from distinct water movement environments that were raised in identical conditions did not. The reciprocal rearing experiments, in conjunction with the morphological variation shown in wild individuals across the exposure gradient, indicate that plasticity is predominantly responsible for the phenotypic variation seen in F. lapillum populations in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand.

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Data can be made available on request. There was no code used in this study.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Brady Doak for skippering the R. V. Hawere. We thank Evan Brown, Peter Browne, Brady Doak, Arie Spyksma and Jenni Stanley for assistance with specimen collection, Lauren Shea for lab assistance, Viv Ward for the fish graphics, and Ian McLeod for valuable conversations. We thank James Rohlf for useful conversations on allometry, and David Sheets for assistance with geometric morphometric analyses. We are also grateful to the staff and students at the Leigh Marine Laboratory. We thank the reviewers for their valuable remarks and suggestions that contributed to improving this manuscript. We thank E. Villouta for providing access to his Fetch Effect Analysis software.

Funding

PEC was funded by a University of Auckland Faculty of Science Doctoral Scholarship, a Faculty of Science internal research grant, and the Hutton Fund grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leigh Marine Laboratory, Institute of Marine Science, University of Auckland, Warkworth, PO Box 349, 0941, Auckland, New Zealand

    Paul E. Caiger & Cécile Croq

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Private Bag, 92019, Auckland, New Zealand

    Kendall D. Clements

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All authors contributed to the study's conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by PC and CC. The first draft of the manuscript was written by PC and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Paul E. Caiger.

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Caiger, P.E., Croq, C. & Clements, K.D. Environmentally induced morphological variation in the temperate reef fish, Forsterygion lapillum (F. Tripterygiidae). Mar Biol 168, 131 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-021-03939-3

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