Fisheries-Induced Evolution
نویسندگان
چکیده
Modern fisheries have drastically changed the level and size dependence of mortality faced by fish populations: commercial fishing usually targets medium-sized and large individuals, which often are relatively invulnerable to natural predators. Life-history theory predicts that fish adapt to these changes through evolutionary alterations in their life histories. Experiments and models predict that such fisheries-induced evolution is potentially fast: significant evolutionary adaptationsmay occur over time scales of just a few generations. A growing body of observational studies of wild fish populations is supporting this theoretical prediction. So far, fisheries-induced changes in maturation schedules are best documented, but several studies are also pointing to changes in growth and reproductive investment. Although fisheries-induced evolution can render fish populations more robust against high exploitation levels, uncontrolled fisheriesinduced evolution is likely to reduce both the quality and the quantity of fisheries yields, calling for management strategies that can mitigate such undesirable effects.
منابع مشابه
Consequences of fisheries-induced evolution for population productivity and recovery potential.
Fisheries-induced evolution has become a major branch of the research on anthropogenic and contemporary evolution. Within the conservation context, fisheries-induced evolution has been hypothesized to negatively affect the persistence and recovery potential of depleted populations, but this has not been explicitly investigated. Here, we investigate how fisheries-induced evolution of Atlantic co...
متن کاملImplications of fisheries-induced evolution for stock rebuilding and recovery
Worldwide depletion of fish stocks has led fisheries managers to become increasingly concerned about rebuilding and recovery planning. To succeed, factors affecting recovery dynamics need to be understood, including the role of fisheries-induced evolution. Here we investigate a stock's response to fishing followed by a harvest moratorium by analyzing an individual-based evolutionary model param...
متن کاملEstimating fisheries-induced selection: traditional gear selectivity research meets fisheries-induced evolution
The study of fisheries-induced evolution is a research field which is becoming recognized both as an important and interesting problem in applied evolution, as well as a practical management problem in fisheries. Much of the research in fisheries-induced evolution has focussed on quantifying and proving that an evolutionary response has taken place, but less effort has been invested on the actu...
متن کاملExpected rate of fisheries-induced evolution is slow.
Commercial fisheries exert high mortalities on the stocks they exploit, and the consequent selection pressure leads to fisheries-induced evolution of growth rate, age and size at maturation, and reproductive output. Productivity and yields may decline as a result, but little is known about the rate at which such changes are likely to occur. Fisheries-induced evolution of exploited populations h...
متن کامل