Catching the Past: Discovering the legacy of historic Atlantic cod exploitation using ancient DNA

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2017

End date

12/31/2021

Budget

982,893 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

¬Humans have used the natural resources of the oceans for thousands of years. For communities around the North Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in particular is of great economic and cultural value. In the last century, the industrial exploitation of cod has been associated with population collapse and phenotypic changes that lead to economic loss, i.e. fish mature at an earlier age and remain smaller. Nevertheless, it is unclear if such periods of intense fishing have had lasting genomic impacts, making it difficult to quantify the full extent of human impact. The main aim of this project is to investigate if the intensive exploitation of cod over thousands of years has affected their population demography or has led to evolutionary change. By extracting DNA from ancient fish remains (up to 9000 years old) we compare the genetic profiles of these fish to those from modern reference databases. The age of the ancient fish remains allows us to investigate patterns of cod diversity from those periods that predate extensive human influence. We also develop novel genetic approaches to trace the extend of historical trade of throughout northern Europe. So far, our temporal analyses show no substantial loss of genetic diversity with high effective population sizes and an absence of major evolutionary change. We have further improved our ability to trace source populations of Atlantic cod from archaeological sites improving our understanding of a temporally and spatially expanding fishing trade.