Epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation comprise an invaluable adaptive toolkit in the early stages of range expansion, especially when genetic diversity is constrained. However, DNA methylation is also known to increase the rate of spontaneous mutations, thus affecting the genetic diversity of a population.
In this project, we analyse reduced-representation bisulfite sequencing and whole genome pool-seq data from marine and freshwater stickleback populations to examine the relationship between methylation variation (between- and within-population), and nucleotide diversity in the context of freshwater adaptation.
