Human-driven evolution threatens fish stocks

January 24th, 2022

Warming oceans and overfishing is causing species to evolve in ways that threaten the sustainability of commercial fisheries

By Ameer Lambrias and Chenyang Yuan, University of Melbourne

For millennia humans have been using selective breeding on domestic animals to change their size, shape, behaviour and other features. But now we are effectively doing this to wild animals on a global scale through another form of artificial selection ‘ as animals are forced to adapt to how we are changing and damaging the environment. […] In previous 2019 research published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology with Philip Sweetman and Ronald Thresher from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisatio n (CSIRO) , Dr Morongiello found that removing larger, dominant individuals disrupted established social hierarchies within fish populations.