Fisheries selection and the components of adaptive potential
Main funder
Funder's project number: 325107
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 438 874,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/09/2019
Project end date: 31/08/2024
Summary
The genetic basis of adaptive potential is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology and the question also has a great applied value. To manage natural resources and conserve species under growing human pressure, it is critically important to assess and understand how human activities affect species’ adaptive potential. Human-induced changes in the molecular components of adaptive potential in natural populations have remained poorly studied because 1) we lack information of the relative contribution of different molecular components to the adaptive potential, 2) changes in adaptive potential caused by human activities remain difficult to demonstrate in nature, where environment is constantly changing, and 3) molecular level changes are difficult to study in non-model organisms. Being unsure what we are looking for has hindered the development of an effective and practical genomic tool to identify human-induced changes in adaptive potential. I use size-selective fisheries as an example of pervasive anthropogenic activity that can erode population’s adaptive potential. I have experimentally harvested zebrafish populations for five generations and induced phenotypic and genetic changes in them. After that, the populations were allowed to recover (i.e., no harvesting) for 10 generations. I will use these unique, long-term selection lines and the latest next-generation sequencing techniques to test whether five generations of size-selective harvesting have affected the components of adaptive potential and whether these effects have eroded during the recovery period. I will focus on sequence-level (coding and non-coding) variation, epigenetic variation, gene networks and within-generation plasticity. I will finally expose the experimental populations to re-harvesting and to a combination of re-harvesting and climate change related disturbance. No study thus far has empirically investigated how the exploited populations respond to the re-start of fishing after recovery or how fisheries selection and climate change interact. Furthermore, studies focusing on the persistency of molecular changes induced by size-selective harvesting are rare, although they could give practical information about the recovery timelines and help validating eco-evolutionary models. My additional goal is to improve the communication between researchers and managers because the practical value of genomics for fisheries management and conservation could be greater than it currently is.
Principal Investigator
Primary responsible unit
Related publications and other outputs
- Directional selection, not the direction of selection, affects telomere length and copy number at ribosomal RNA loci (2024) Sadler, Daniel E.; et al.; A1; OA
- Does size‐selective harvesting erode adaptive potential to thermal stress? (2024) Sadler, Daniel E.; et al.; A1; OA
- Fish with slow life‐history cope better with chronic manganese exposure than fish with fast life‐history (2024) Uusi‐Heikkilä, Silva; et al.; A1; OA
- Food-web complexity, consumer behavior, and diet specialism: impacts on ecosystem stability (2024) Perälä, Tommi; et al.; A1; OA
- Gut Microbiota Profiling as a Promising Tool to Detect Equine Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) (2024) Sävilammi, Tiina; et al.; A1; OA
- Mutually exclusive feeding yields Holling type III functional response (2024) Lehtinen, Sami O.; et al.; A1; OA
- Size‐selective harvesting drives genomic shifts in a harvested population (2024) Sadler, Daniel E.; et al.; A1; OA
- Generalist invasion in a complex lake food web (2023) Kuparinen, Anna; et al.; A1; OA
- The Riddle of How Fisheries Influence Genetic Diversity (2023) Sadler, Daniel E.; et al.; A2; OA
- The second life of terrestrial and plastic carbon as nutritionally valuable food for aquatic consumers (2023) Taipale, S. J.; et al.; A1; OA