Genetic adaptations of rainbow trout to climate

Jared Grummer, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Biodiversity Research Centre, describes his research on the genetic adaptations of rainbow trout in British Columbia.

My name is Jared Grummer. I'm a postdoctoral research fellow with the Whitlock and Taylor labs at the Biodiversity Research Centre. I work on rainbow trout in British Columbia. We're looking for signatures of local adaptation in the genome to divergent climate, so whether things are warm or cold, we're trying to see if there's specific adaptations at the genetic level to these different environments.

I think my favourite research memory was when I was working in the Amazon (rainforest) about 15 years ago. It was actually not directly involved in my own research but when we were walking to our field site, there was always one place on the trail that we would notice that there was an Ocelot. We grew to tell the different reflections of the eyes with different animals - whether it was a snake, a spider, a cat whatever. We knew this one part of the trail had an ocelot around it, and so one night we saw the ocelot and it was close and so we decided to go try to find it. We actually ended up getting within about five meters of it at one point and it was really cool, but then we actually got lost off the trail and Leafcutter ants had kind of chewed up some of our bags and plastic. But yeah, being able to be within five meters of an ocelot in the wild was pretty awesome!

My favourite single organism is definitely my dog, my Chocolate lab Sage. But my favourite species I think would have to be a mushroom. We in North America, we've used the scientific names from from the UK and Europe, and so the species isBoletus edulis but I think most people would know it as the Porcini. It's a good edible mushroom, so I love finding it because they're so substantial and when you rip them out of the ground they really tear out of the ground, but they also you know, have an important process and ecosystems under the ground that I really appreciate. So definitely one of my top species.

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