The ninespine stickleback lives in streams, lakes, ponds and rivers and favors thick submerged vegetation, as its small spines do not offer much protection.

[citation needed] The species occurs in freshwater systems draining into the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic across Canada, Alaska, and south to New Jersey.

The ninespine stickleback is a euryhaline and eurythermal species of teleost fish, occupying both freshwater and marine habitats in higher latitudes of the world.

Recently, this species has been under great examination due to pond populations' adaptations of morphology, life history, and behavior which separates them from their marine conspecifics.

[7] This means they cannot gulp air from the surface of the water, as physostome fish do, in order to compensate for an environment of low dissolved oxygen, hypoxia.

[8] Ninespines must rely solely on their gas secretion and absorption abilities, using aquatic surface respiration (ASR) when facing a hypoxic situation.

Ninespine Stickleback do not regularly experience nocturnal hypoxia in their natural environments, and therefore, have slower and decreased control of their swim-bladder lift.

[7] The celebrated British zoologist Desmond Morris (born 1928) published a paper in 1952 — "Homosexuality in the ten-spined stickleback (Pygosteus pungitius L.).

[11]) Morris described and illustrated the normal reproductive behavior of the stickleback as well as certain "pseudofemale" variants which he thought might be fairly frequent in occurrence.