Threespine stickleback

stykylbak, sticklebanke, sticklebanck, stickle bag(ge), stit(t)le bag(ge), stittle-back, stickle-back, stickleback

This page links to most of our lab and field procedures for working with threespine stickleback. Refer to the sidebar for links to specific topics.

The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus complex) is a small fish common in many temperate coastal marine and fresh waters of the northern hemisphere. Niko Tinbergen's studies of the behavior of this fish were important to the development of the field of ethology. It now has a fully sequenced genome and has become a model vertebrate for studies in the fields of animal behavior, evolution, genetics, and toxicology.

The threespine stickleback species complex reaches the height of its diversity in lakes and streams of British Columbia. The populations occurring here include some of the youngest species of organisms on earth. Most water bodies contain only a single stickleback species, but pairs of species have evolved independently in a few small lakes that are less than 12000 years old. The system has wonderful properties that allow us to address very basic questions concerning the roles of resources, species interactions, phenotypic plasticity, sexual selection and other factors in the evolution of diversity. Distinct populations and species produce viable and fertile hybrids, making it possible to investigate the genetic basis of species differences.  

The photo above shows a male of the benthic species from Paxton Lake, Texada Island, BC. He is guarding a family of stickleback fry that hatched a few days previously.