Threespine Stickleback Ecological Sexual Dimorphism Data from Southwestern Canada

Data from a study testing evolutionary hypotheses on ecological sexual dimorphism in threespine stickleback populations from southwestern Canada. The dataset, authored by Stephanie A. Blain and harvested from Borealis, was last updated on 2026-04-25. It contains measurements of body shape and size dimorphism across marine and freshwater populations, including solitary and sympatric ecotypes.

Use Cases

• Testing the divergence hypothesis by analyzing changes in body shape dimorphism relative to ancestral marine populations.
• Evaluating the competition hypothesis by comparing dimorphism levels between solitary populations and those coexisting with a competitor species.
• Investigating how sympatry with Benthic ecotypes influences sexual size dimorphism in Limnetic sticklebacks.
• Examining the relationship between phenotypic distance from an ancestral state and the magnitude of ecological sexual dimorphism.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a specific, testable scientific study with clear hypotheses (divergence and competition).
• Includes comparisons across multiple population types: marine ancestors, derived freshwater, solitary, and sympatric ecotypes.
• Last updated date is explicitly provided (2026-04-25 04:12:28).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analyses.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the sampled populations in southwestern Canada.

Provenance

Source

Borealis Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Likely contains field measurements from biological specimens collected for the described study.

Time Range

Time of data collection is not specified; temporal coverage must be inferred from the study context.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-25 04:12:28; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southwestern Canada