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REVIEW article
Front. Fish Sci.
Sec. Fish Experimental Biology
Volume 3 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/frish.2025.1525181
This article is part of the Research Topic Patterns, causes and consequences of intraspecific variation in environmental tolerance in fishes View all 3 articles
How genomic and environmental relationships shape phenotypic plasticity in brook charr Salvelinus fontinalis: An historical review
Provisionally accepted- 1 Université du Québec à Rimouski, Rimouski, Canada
- 2 Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
- 3 University of Turku, Turku, Southwest Finland, Finland
- 4 UMR LEMAR 6539, Plouzané, France, Plouzané, France
This review revisits 20 years of collaborative studies that were pursued with Louis Bernatchez who sadly passed away in October 2023. With him, we explored the phenotypic plasticity of brook charr by combining ecophysiology, genetics, genomics, and more recently epigenetics. Over the years, we conducted extensive studies on brook charr, focusing on metabolism, stress response, growth regulation, and temperature tolerance across various strains. Our research highlighted the remarkable diversity in physiological responses to temperature and salinity conditions, along with significant differences in the heritability of key traits across different strains and life stages. We studied stages from yolk-sac fry to reproductive adults, compared freshwater residents and anadromous fish, and recently showed how epigenetics affects the physiological and transcriptomic responses of progeny to temperature conditions. This review highlights the incredible physiological plasticity of brook charr and presents future research avenues that will lead to a better understanding of how the species may face challenges related to global changes.
Keywords: phenotypic plasticity, development, Growth, stress, Metabolism, Sex-linked traits, Anadromy, Adaptability
Received: 08 Nov 2024; Accepted: 31 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Audet, Garant, Crespel and Vagner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Céline Audet, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Rimouski, Canada
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