Evolutionarily sustainable consumption

The phenomenon of heritable traits is best documented for fish, but is also relevant for other wild animal resources and plants. EEP’s research on this topic has progressed on three different fronts, as summarized below.

First, EEP continues to contribute to the development of tools suitable for tackling exploitation-induced evolution. Modeling tools help to predict the future evolution of exploited fish stocks, to understand observed past changes, and to evaluate the merits of alternative management strategies. These tools include ecogenetic models (Dunlop et al., in revision) and adaptive-dynamics models (Ernande et al., in revision). Probabilistic maturation reaction norms have become a key tool for analyzing trends in the maturation schedules of exploited fish stocks and are under continual development (Heino et al., in revision – b).

Second, these tools are applied to concrete case studies. This line of research is conducted in collaboration with national fisheries research institutes, which in 2012 included those in Iceland, Korea, the Netherlands, and Norway. Specific studies dealt with Atlantic cod in Iceland (Pardoe et al., in preparation), capelin and cod in the Barents Sea (Baulier et al., 2012; Eikeset et al., in revision), plaice in the North Sea (Mollet et al., in revision), and chum salmon in Korea (Urbach et al., 2012). Additionally, information derived from these and other studies have been summarized for a wider audience (Heino et al., 2012a) and synthesized in a meta-analysis (Devine et al., 2012).

Evolutionary responses to harvesting depend on an intricate interplay between the classes of individuals that are harvested (rows), the classes that are affected by natural predation (columns), and the life-history trade-offs through which early maturation reduces survival, growth, or fecundity (panels). Arrows indicate the expected direction of maturation evolution in response to harvesting (down/red: evolution toward earlier maturation; up/blue: evolution toward later maturation; thick: abrupt evolutionary change; thin: gradual evolutionary change; blank: no evolutionary change).

Third (see Figure above), EEP has engaged in strategic studies that address basic open questions about exploitation-induced evolution. Recent progress includes a systematic investigation of maturation evolution in harvested and predated populations under three different kinds of life-history trade-off (Bodin et al., 2012), an assessment of the practical implications of sex structure and mate choice for fisheries-induced evolution (Mollet et al., in revision), and a discussion of key factors determining the evolution of growth (Enberg et al., 2012). At a more fundamental level, investigations have examined the role of maternal effects in the evolutionary ecology of fishes (Kotrschal et al., 2012), secondary sexual characteristics in codfishes (Skjæraasen et al., 2012), and the population structure and ecology of important coastal fish species (Heino et al., 2012b).

Last edited: 31 October 2013