Project: Characterization of Whirling Disease Resistance Patterns in Rainbow Trout from Harrison Lake, Montana: Classification of Resistant and Susceptible Individuals and Elucidation of the Effects of Recent Natural Selection

Primary Investigator: Eric Wagner
Project Summary: The primary goal of this project is to provide a formal characterization of patterns of whirling disease resistance in rainbow trout from Harrison Lake, Montana. All work conducted to date suggests that this population harbors a substantial proportion of individuals that show resistance to the whirling disease parasite. Genetic analyses have also revealed a set of genetic markers for this system that may provide utility for distinguishing between resistant and susceptible individuals. Thus, one major goal of this project is to generate multilocus genotypes for adult individuals from both the wild population in Harrison Lake and a separate sub-adult stock currently held in captivity at the Fisheries Experiment Station in Logan, Utah. These analyses may ultimately allow for development of captive broodstock strains differing primarily in the extent of their disease resistance. Captive resistant broodstock may be useful for supplementing wild populations that have been impacted by the disease. Also, future research efforts may be facilitated through comparisons of closely related fish that vary primarily in disease resistance attributes. Furthermore, previous genetic analyses have provided results consistent with the effects of recent natural selection acting in the population since introduction of the parasite ~10 years ago. Therefore, the research team has developed a set of experiments to characterize demographic variation (i.e., variation among cohorts) in disease susceptibility among fish from different age classes and also identify genetic markers that show appreciable changes in genetic diversity since introduction of the parasite. Overall, these latter analyses may provide researchers with an understanding of expected timings of recovery efforts for decimated populations if resistant fish are used for population supplementation.
Funding Period: 2005-2006
Final Report: 2005-2006 final report not yet available
Dataset(s) associated with this project:

There are no datasets associated with this project.