Acronym NA
Category
Fisheries
Title An experimental evaluation of fisheries induced evolution and its consequences Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National
Coordinator institution
UiB - University of Bergen (Norway)
Institutions involved
NA
Start year 2012 End year 2017 Funding (€) € 1,198,526 Website https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/en/project/FORISS/214189?Kilde=FORISS&distribution=Ar&chart=bar&calcType=funding&Sprak=no&sortBy=date&sortOrder=desc&resultCount=30&offset=180&Organisasjon.5=Institutt+for+biovitenskap Summary "In agriculture we ensure that genes from the best animals are taken care of. In fisheries, we do the opposite: by preferentially capturing the biggest individuals, we are also removing the gene variants that help individuals to grow big. Over time this will lead to fish populations that are genetically adapted to start reproducing earlier and grow slower. This can reduce the productivity of the stock and make it less valuable as a resource.
Our knowledge about fisheries-induced evolution is primarily based on models and field observations. However, model results suffer from the simplifications that underlie them, and field observations can be difficult to interpret as fish populations are also strongly influenced by the environment. It is also difficult to observe fish in their natural habitats. We overcome these limitations by studying fisheries-induced evolution in the lab. The experiment is based on the guppy, a fish that is easy to maintain and has short generation time. One year in our guppy experiment can correspond to ten years in the wild.
We harvested our guppy populations for three years, from autumn 2010 to autumn 2013. We can observe a tendency towards earlier reproduction, but also that the fish are strongly influenced by ""environmental"" factors such food availability and predation, exactly as happens in the wild, except that the predation in our experiment comes mostly from the larger-sized, cannibalistic conspecifics rather than larger predatory species. In contrast to the wild, we are able to raise the fish also under controlled conditions. These show changes in growth, maturation, behaviour, and subtle changes in morphology and colouration. We can also sequence their genetic material to directly see changes in the inherited traits. Genomic analyses suggest marked genetic changes in the harvest guppy populations related to functions like signal transduction, sensory perception, muscle development, and immune system.
The second part of the experiment concerns the potential evolutionary recovery after fishing is stopped. This should usually lead to rapid recovery in population abundance, but the evolutionary recovery is a different story: theoretical models suggest that evolutionary recovery will be much slower than the adaptive evolution during fishing. Results obtained so far suggest that this is true also in our experiment."
Keywords
Fish biology;
Genetic;
Fish;
Fisheries management;
Marine Region
14
Skagerrak, Kattegat (27.IIIa)
42
Barents Sea (27.I)
13
Northern North Sea (27.IVa)
41
Norwegian Sea (27.IIa)
4
Marine Region Map
