Life-history approach to evolutionary adaptation and recovery of Atlantic cod

CEES Extra seminar by Anna Kuparinen

To understand and to predict demographic rates of a population, one needs to understand how individual life-histories, their evolution, and assumptions made about those can influence population dynamics. Here, I present a simulation model that incorporates ecological and evolutionary dynamics of fish life-histories. The model is parameterized for Atlantic cod and applied to two case studies: 1) To investigate the role of the survival cost of reproduction on the demography and adaptation of life-histories, and 2) To investigate the effects of fisheries-induced evolution on extinction risk and recovery ability of a population. The simulations suggest that the survival cost of reproduction is a substantial component of natural selection, and omitting it leads to underestimation of the age and size at maturity and overestimation of spawning stock biomass. In contrast, the effects of fisheries-induced evolution on population growth rate remain minor, suggesting that fisheries-induced evolution might not affect the extinction risk and recovery rate of an exploited population, as previously hypothesized.

Anna Kuparinen
Ecological Genetics Research Unit
Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki

 

Published Mar. 6, 2012 2:12 PM - Last modified Oct. 31, 2018 2:31 PM