How Fisheries Affect Evolution

摘要

The extensive exploitation of marine resources by modern fisheries (see the figure) has wide-ranging effects on marine ecosystems. Across the world's oceans, size-selective harvesting by commercial fisheries has been a key driving force behind changes in phenotypic traits such as body size and age at maturation (1-3). These changes have altered the trophic structure of the affected ecosystems, disturbed predator-prey relationships, and modified trophic cascade dynamics (3, 4).