Environmental change unlinks a gene from its trait

Abstract

In Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), sea age is a major life history trait governed by a sex-specific trade-off between reproductive success and survival. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Besnier et al. (Molecular Ecology, 2023) found evidence to suggest that the disassociation between sea age and major effect loci, including the previously identified candidate genes vgll3 and six6, may be related to the recently observed trend towards slower growth and later maturation. These results are of importance because they challenge the prevailing view that evolution moves in a slow shuffle, and they provide a pertinent example of how an optimal phenotype can change due to growth-driven plasticity and lead to contemporary molecular and phenotypic evolution.