With or without equations: what are the dos and don'ts of hunting?

摘要

In Bischof et al. (2008), we evaluated the validity of the recommendation made by other authors (e.g. Loehr et al. 2007; Milner et al. 2007; Bergeron et al. 2008) that hunting mortality should mimic the patterns of natural mortality. We used simulations to show that biased harvesting (with respect to an arbitrary trait), added to similarly biased natural mortality (regardless of the order), will amplify the trait-shifting effect, whereas unbiased harvesting will leave the post-mortality trait distribution unchanged. Although these findings are not surprising and are based on principles well known to demographers and quantitative geneticists, they helped us to point out that a single strategy may be insufficient to address the need for 'ecologicallyresponsible' harvesting regimes.