For the past two years I have been collecting fin clippings of resident trout in the tarns and lakes of the English Lake District.
Surprisingly, despite the Freshwater Biological Association being on the shores of Windermere for decades not once was a comprehensive survey of the fish populations of the English Lake District ever undertaken.
There isn’t even a presence and absence survey let alone any attempt to see if there is any genetic divergence between isolated lakes and tarns populations and the semi-isolated drainage systems of the main lakes (interconnected by sea trout migration via the Irish Sea and Solway Firth).
At present, I am probably 2/3 in with two more years sampling the remainder of the stillwater bodies that I know, or suspect, contain trout in the Lake District catchment and I am seeking able bodied (some of the tarns are nearly 700m up) and / or currently practicing genetic analysts to share this study with.
The nature of the samples (frozen fin clippings) means that this is potentially a project that could involve researchers anywhere in the world. As for the field work component an interest in fishing is required and a healthy disregard to sudden inclement meteorological conditions is suggested.
Did some years work with a colleague on local euro brown trout pops via MS and AFLP data (round 350 fish) for pop-genetics, inbreeding estimates and relatedness, so familiar and interested. freelancer too (kul-lab.de) plus interested in putting up musical stuff too ;-) key question: got funding?
Gentlemen, thank you for your responses. I'm an independent researcher so don't have funding other than through my business (music to trout genetics- there's an interesting one for the taxman). I can't imagine what sequencing would actually cost these days if not funded within an academic department that has interest in, effectively, a four year sampling survey of an ecological natural experiment to answer some interesting questions on population genetics of native trout species in semi-isolated post glacial drainage systems as well as shining an analytic light on the origins of re-population of previously acidified montaine limnic environments from those drainage systems (human introduction or natural recolinisation events). I am happy to attach a more full description of the Lake District tour genetics survey I propose for this surprisingly piscatorially understudied (diatom studies in the Lake District have received far far more attention than Salmo trutta) area. Thanks again for your interest. Really appreciated. Ta, Ben
One of the key questions I need an answer to is an idea on a reasonable sample size. At the moment I'm working on a minimum of three samples from each location with the assumption that fixed differences in truly isolated systems (could be one tarn or a whole drainage system) would show in even a small sample size.
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