Cost of life-history adaptations: Multiple-trait consequences of fisheries-induced evolution

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2018

End date

12/31/2023

Budget

1,247,466 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

There is no such thing as a free lunch. This applies also to animals adapting to new challenges in their environment. In practice, this means that if they get more "perfected" in one way, they will get slightly less perfected in some other ways. In wild animals, just how the costs of adaptation are paid is often difficult to demonstrate. In this project, we use guppies that have been selected to excel under different size-dependent fishing regimes to study how their characteristics have changed in ways that are not directly related to their performance under fishing. We have tested how different size-selection regimes affect the ability of fish to combat parasite infections. We have used Gyrodactylus turnbulli, an ectoparasite that is a common problem in aquarium trade. Our results show that fish adapted to different fishing regimes have different ability to cope with the parasite: fish coming from populations subject to harvesting of small fish develop higher parasite loads than fish from randomly harvested populations or from populations subject to harvesting of large fish. This finding is consistent with the ?pace of life syndrome?: when selection favors fast development to maturity (harvest of small fish), they have less energy available to invest in immune defenses and responses. Interestingly, fish from randomly harvested populations had initially high parasite loads, but were the only group that was consistently able to reduce parasite loads towards the experimental period.