Paul Bentzen (PB - Dalhousie University):

Paul Bentzen is a leader in applying genetic techniques to the analysis of fitness in natural populations of fish and other aquatic organisms. For example, he has applied genetic markers and parentage analysis to evaluate: 1) the relative fitness of hatchery versus wild salmon, 2) the influence of mating system on reproductive success in salmon and other fishes, and 3) the patterns of survival through the vulnerable larval phases of the life cycle in rainbow smelt. These and other projects share the property of his use of highly variable molecular markers to evaluate reproductive success or survival through different life stages. He has developed microsatellite markers for 15 species of fish and four species of aquatic invertebrates. He has already developed eleven tetranucleotide loci for guppies; others are available from the literature. Tetranucleotide loci have more discrete differences among alleles and can be more readily scored without error. He has also developed the methods to process the fish efficiently and on a large enough scale to yield data on the short time-frame required for our project. He will supervise the processing of all tissue samples, and participate in the parentage analysis. He has already successfully completed a study of this scale on guppies in collaboration with AH and MK.

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