Hadley Lake Limnetic Stickleback
The Hadley Lake Limnetic Stickleback was an open-water ecological form of the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) that existed in a single freshwater lake on Lasqueti Island, British Columbia.
It evolved alongside a bottom-dwelling benthic counterpart in the same lake — a rare case of two distinct forms diverging from one ancestral species within a single body of water.
Illegal introduction of Brown Bullhead wiped out both forms before most of the world knew they existed.
- Small open-water fish built for pelagic life in the lake's mid-water column rather than along the bottom — the limnetic body plan typical of the three-spined stickleback lineage.
- Shared its lake with the Hadley Lake Benthic Stickleback, a bottom-adapted counterpart; both descended from Gasterosteus aculeatus but diverged into ecologically distinct forms.
What to know
Habitat Distribution
- Hadley Lake on Lasqueti Island, British Columbia was its entire known range — one lake, nowhere else on Earth. Now extinct.
- Within that lake, it occupied the open-water pelagic zone, leaving the substrate to its benthic counterpart sharing the same water.
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