Preventing the collapse of the Baltic cod stock through an ecosystem-based management approach

Worldwide a number of fish stocks have collapsed because of overfishing and climate-induced ecosystem changes. Developing ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) to prevent these catastrophic events in the future requires ecological models incorporating both internal food-web dynamics and external drivers such as fishing and climate. Using a stochastic food-web model for a large marine ecosystem (i.e., the Baltic Sea) hosting a commercially important cod stock, we were able to reconstruct the history of the stock. Moreover we demonstrate that in hindsight the collapse could only have been avoidable by adapting fishing pressure to environmental conditions and food-web interactions. The modeling approach presented here represents a significant advance for EBFM, the application of which is important for sustainable resource management in the future.     

Connecting the study of wild influenza with the potential for pandemic disease

Continuing outbreaks of pathogenic (H5N1) and pandemic (SOIVH1N1) influenza have underscored the need to understand the origin, characteristics, and evolution of novel influenza A virus (IAV) variants that pose a threat to human health. In the last 4–5 years, focus has been placed on the organization of large-scale surveillance programs to examine the phylogenetics of avian influenza virus (AIV) and host–virus relationships in domestic and wild animals. Here we review the current gaps in wild animal and environmental surveillance and the current understanding of genetic signatures in potentially pandemic strains.     

Trait changes in a harvested population are driven by a dynamic tug-of-war between natural and harvest selection

Selective harvest of large individuals should alter natural adaptive landscapes and drive evolution toward reduced somatic growth and increased reproductive investment. However, few studies have simultaneously considered the relative importance of artificial and natural selection in driving trait changes in wild populations. Using 50 years of individual-based data on Windermere pike (Esox lucius), we show that trait changes tracked the adaptive peak, which moved in the direction imposed by the dominating selective force. Individual lifetime somatic growth decreased at the start of the time series because harvest selection was strong and natural selection was too weak to override the strength of harvest selection. However, natural selection favoring fast somatic growth strengthened across the time series in parallel with the increase in pike abundance and, presumably, cannibalism. Harvest selection was overridden by natural selection when the fishing effort dwindled, triggering a rapid increase in pike somatic growth. The two selective forces appear to have acted in concert during only one short period of prey collapse that favored slow-growing pike. Moreover, increased somatic growth occurred concurrently with a reduction in reproductive investment in young and small female pike, indicating a tradeoff between growth and reproduction. The age-specific amplitude of this change paralleled the age-specific strength of harvest pressure, suggesting that reduced investment was also a response to increased life expectancy. This is the first study to demonstrate that a consideration of both natural selection and artificial selection is needed to fully explain time-varying trait dynamics in harvested populations.     

The effect of climatic forcing on population synchrony and genetic structuring of the Canadian lynx

The abundance of Canadian lynx follows 10-year density fluctuations across the Canadian subcontinent. These cyclic fluctuations have earlier been shown to be geographically structured into three climatic regions: the Atlantic, Continental, and Pacific zones. Recent genetic evidence revealed an essentially similar spatial structuring. Introducing a new population model, the "climate forcing of ecological and evolutionary patterns" model, we link the observed ecological and evolutionary patterns. Specifically, we demonstrate that there is greater phase synchrony within climatic zones than between them and show that external climatic forcing may act as a synchronizer. We simulated genetic drift by using data on population dynamics generated by the climate forcing of ecological and evolutionary patterns model, and we demonstrate that the observed genetic structuring can be seen as an emerging property of the spatiotemporal ecological dynamics.