On the origin of Baltic herring by means of natural selection
Understanding how species genetically adapt to new environments is a central question in evolutionary biology. To address this, we generated whole-genome sequencing and RNA sequencing data to study Atlantic herring, a marine fish that has colonized the brackish Baltic Sea. This dataset contains bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data generated from whole-body samples of herring reared under controlled temperature and salinity conditions, including both Atlantic and Baltic populations. The experiment was designed to examine how environmental factors influence early development and associated gene expression. Total RNA was extracted from fertilized eggs and larval samples, and strand-specific libraries were prepared and sequenced on an Illumina platform to generate paired-end reads.