Thursday, May 31, 2018

A new challenge (or boon) for fisheries: evolution in non-target species

Fisheries harvests may drive evolution in lower, non-targeted species, and this evolution can bolster or undermine the harvested species.

Humans are good at altering ecosystems, even unintentionally. Human actions can also alter selection pressures on organisms, driving new evolution. One example of such evolution that demands urgent attention is fisheries-induced evolution, in which harvest drives trait change in fish. The details of fisheries-induced evolution are fairly straightforward: larger, bolder fish are more likely to be caught by fishing gear, leaving smaller, shier individuals behind. The result is an evolved fishery, which may interact differently with its environment and have lower long-term stability.

Harvest drives changes in fish behavior and morphology

Growing evidence for trait change in harvested species has led to calls for fishery evolutionary impact assessments, which consider the effect of harvest-induced evolution on fishery yield, sustainability, and recovery. However, little work has considered the potential for evolution in lower, non-target trophic levels to impact fisheries.

Our recent modeling experiments reveal a harvest-driven eco-evolutionary trophic cascade: Declines in harvested species can drive cascading changes down food webs, altering selection pressures on lower trophic levels. Evolution in these lower trophic levels can cause cascading changes back up the food web, ultimately altering the abundance of the harvested species.

Harvest-induced evolution in lower trophic levels predictably feeds-back to affect the harvested species.
From Wood et al 2018, Scientific Reports. Used with a CC license.

The direction and impact of evolution in lower trophic levels is predictable, according to our models. Odd numbered trophic levels (referring to position below the harvested species, e.g. secondary consumers in our table) have fewer prey and predators during harvest, and thus evolve increased competitive ability, at the cost of lower defense. These numerous, vulnerable individuals give a bottom-up boost to the food web, which can bolster the harvested species. Even numbered trophic levels (e.g. primary consumers in our table) have more predators and prey, and thus evolve increased defenses, at the cost of competitive ability. These less numerous, more defended individuals undermine the trophic levels above them, thus ultimately undercutting the harvested species. The net effect of evolution on the harvested species therefore depends on which trophic levels evolve, with potential for evolution at multiple trophic levels to be cancelling or synergistic.

Our models provide some insights on where effects of evolution in lower trophic levels might have the strongest effect on harvested species. Species with abundant variation, even tradeoffs between competition and defense, and strong interactions with predators and prey are most likely to drive the eco-evolutionary dynamics we observed. We suggest that metrics of trophic cascade strength or interaction strength are a good first clue towards finding systems where eco-evolutionary feedbacks are of particular concern.

Our model does not merely indicate another source of doom for fisheries. Indeed, it suggests that some evolution in non-target trophic levels might even help offset some more direct effects of harvest. Rather, our model highlights the importance of understanding evolution and eco-evolutionary feedbacks in communities, rather than just a single species, when approaching conservation problems. 

The major next step of this work—one which we hope will be investigated by evolutionary biologists and ecologists alike—is to collect the data necessary to detect eco-evolutionary feedbacks from non-target species. Monitoring phenotypes of lower trophic levels in harvested ecosystems, as well as mining current datasets for evidence of trait change in non-target species, are two possible ways forward. If you have any ideas, feel free to get in touch!

Making a modeler
I started my PhD at the University of Maine in fall 2015. Naively intending to immediately begin some intrepid and fulfilling experiments with mosquitofish, I quickly languished under long waits at the hands of state government, institutional animal care, and facilities. It seemed I would have an endless PhD, devoid of any fishy work.

Advisor Mike Kinnison demonstrating his fishing skills.

As a side project to preserve my dwindling patience and sanity, I began working on a short R script to model two-species eco-evolutionary dynamics. After some encouragement from my advisors Mike Kinnison and Eric Palkovacs, I expanded my model to include three, then four evolving trophic levels. Running against the limits of processing power on my laptop, I translated the entire script to Matlab (though not without several angry weekends of debugging), and used some limited funding to purchase a lab computer. Mike eventually intervened, encouraging me to channel my newfound obsession into a productive problem: fisheries induced evolution. One year, several lost weekends, and two failed attempts at beards later, we had a new theory on fisheries induced evolution and trophic cascades. And I finally started working on some real fish.

Looking for eco-evolutionary trophic cascades with Eric Palkovacs' UCSC lab.

Three years into my degree, I now have more real-world fishy data than ever needed to occupy my time. In retrospect, I think starting my degree program with some modelling was a great opportunity. It’s hard to know if I would have had the same bandwidth to launch into a similar model at this point in my program, and the models have helped me focus my field and lab work. Based on my experience, my tip to anyone contemplating some modelling as part of their dissertation is to start early when everything else is tied up in limbo. The nice thing about models is that most can be adapted as your dissertation morphs and grows.

Zach Wood is a PhD Candidate in Mike Kinnison's Evolutionary Applications Lab at the University of Maine, and definitely not a morning person.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Controversial Ideas in Evolutionary Biology

THE POLL IS NOW UP HERE

Jeremy Fox over at Dynamic Ecology recently conducted a poll on controversial ideas in ecology. As example, some of the most controversial ideas turned out to be:


1. Species interactions are typically stronger and more specialized in the tropics.

2. Local diversity is declining in most or all localities

3. Species’ poleward geographic range limits typically are set by abiotic factors, not species interactions.

Jeremy contacted Dan Bolnick and I and suggested the perhaps it would be interesting to do a similar poll for evolutionary biology. We agree. For starters, we would like to get your opinion from the comments section on this post to select a series of questions for use for the formal poll. As examples, I am going to here suggest a few questions of the sort and form that would work well for a survey.

1. To a first approximation, neutral processes can be ignored as an explanation for organismal trait variation.

2. To a first approximation, neutral processes can be ignored as an explanation for speciation.

3. Evolutionary constraints are a strong influence on short term evolution.

4. Evolutionary constraints are strong influence on long term evolution.

5. Gene flow generally constrains adaptive evolution.

6. Character displacement is an important force in trait evolution.

7. Reinforcement is an important force in speciation.

8. Sympatric speciation is very rare.

Please suggest some more controversial ideas in the comments below. If you are curious about the survey to come, here is some text from the Dynamic Ecology poll, modified slightly for the present context.
Scientific controversies provide a fascinating window into the collective scientific process. The cartoon idealized image of science is a rigorous process, conducted by objective individuals, that converges on the truth. Which makes it mysterious why there would ever be scientific controversies, as opposed to mere uncertainty due to lack of evidence.
But for scientific controversies to give insight into how science actually works, you have to know which scientific ideas actually are controversial, or to what extent they’re controversial. That’s not always easy to figure out, even for scientists themselves! For instance, the scientists who publish on an idea generally are only a minority of the scientists with an opinion on the idea, and not a randomly-sampled minority. So you can’t always read the literature and tell the difference between, say, an idea that splits scientific opinion down the middle, and an idea on which most scientists believe X but a vocal minority believe not-X (see here and here for discussion).

Hence this poll! It will list a number of controversial or possibly-controversial evolutionary ideas. Readers will then indicate if they think each idea is definitely false (“1”), definitely true (“5”), or somewhere in between.
Each idea will be stated briefly, without caveats or elaboration, the way it might be summarized in a textbook or in the beginning of a paper. That’s the only practical way to poll on this. Plus, arguably the reason why evolutionary ideas become both widespread and controversial is by getting stripped of details, nuance, and caveats.

A 25-year quest for the Holy Grail of evolutionary biology

When I started my postdoc in 1998, I think it is safe to say that the Holy Grail (or maybe Rosetta Stone) for many evolutionary biologists w...