DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qfttdz0rx
title: Does motility-restricting fibrosis influence dispersal? An experiment in nature with threespine stickleback

description: Dispersal can affect individual-level fitness and population-level
 ecological and evolutionary processes. Factors that affect dispersal could
 therefore have important eco-evolutionary implications. Here, we
 investigated the extent to which an inflammation and tissue repair
 response – peritoneal fibrosis – which is known to restrict movement,
 could influence dispersal by conducting a mark-recapture experiment in a
 lake in Alaska with threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculatus). A
 subset of captured stickleback were injected with aluminum phosphate to
 experimentally induce fibrosis ('treatment group'), and another
 subset were injected with saline or received no injection– both of which
 do not induce fibrosis ('control group'). We released all fish
 at one introduction point and re-sampled stickleback throughout the lake
 for eight days. We recaptured 123 individuals (n = 47 fibrosis treatment;
 n = 76 control) and dissected them to determine fibrosis levels. Overall,
 fibrosis did not affect dispersal. Some compelling, but not statistically
 significant, trends suggest that early-stage inflammation may affect
 dispersal, providing opportunities for future work. By showing that
 effects to dispersal are not important side-effects of fibrosis, these
 findings improve our understanding of the ecological implications of
 immune responses.
description: # Does motility-restricting fibrosis influence dispersal? An experiment in
 nature with threespine stickleback
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qfttdz0rx](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qfttdz0rx) ## Description of the data and file structure Factors that affect dispersal can have important eco-evolutionary implications. Here, we show that an inflammation and tissue repair response – peritoneal fibrosis – does not influence threespine stickleback dispersal. To do so, we conducted a mark-recapture experiment in a lake in Alaska. A subset of stickleback were injected with aluminum phosphate, which induces fibrosis. Another subset were either injected with phosphate buffered saline, or received no injection (handling control group), both of which do not induce fibrosis. We released fish from all treatment groups (alum, saline, handling) into the lake and resampled throughout the lake, at various distances from that introduction point. Re-captured stickleback were dissected to determine the extent of their fibrosis.  ### Files and variables #### File: heckley_alumDryadData.csv **Description:**  ##### Variables * id: Unique identifier assigned to an individual stickleback upon recapture.  * trap: Unique identifier assigned to a given trap set at a given location. * treatment: The treatment received by a given individual (alum = experimentally induced fibrosis; saline and dorsal = control). Dorsal = handling only control (this is called 'dorsal' because these fish were identified with a dorsal spine clip) * day: The day of the experiment, where 1 = first day of recapturing, and 8 = the final day of recapturing. * fibrosis: Fibrosis score assigned to a given stickleback, from 0 (no fibrosis) to 4 (most severe extent of fibrosis). * sex: Male (M) or female (F). * mass: The mass (g) of a given individual. * standardLength: The standard length (mm) of a given individual. * captureSide: The side of the lake that a given stickleback was recaptured on.  * schisto: A binary variable indicating whether a given individual is infected with *Schistocephalus solidus*. * gpsLon: The longitude of the trap at which a given stickleback was captured. * gpsLat: The latitude of the trap at which a given stickleback was captured. * distFromRelease_gps: The distance between the trap at which a stickleback was captured and the point where stickleback were initially introduced. ## Code/software The associated code is an R markdown file. The analyses were conducted with R version 4.3.1.