Abstract
In most fisheries, larger fish experience substantially higher mortality than smaller fish. Body length, life history, and behavioral traits are often correlated, such that fisheries-induced changes in size or life history can also alter behavioral traits. However, empirical evidence regarding how size-selective harvesting alters the evolution of behavioral traits in exploited stocks is scarce. We used experimental lines of Zebrafish Danio rerio that were exposed to positively size-selective, negatively size-selective, or random harvest over five generations. Our aim was to investigate whether simulated fishing changed the mean personality of the surviving females five generations after initial harvesting halted. We found that mean boldness, activity, and sociability were significantly altered relative to the randomly harvested control line. Harvest-induced changes in individual-level personality were only detected in the negatively size-selected line. By contrast, we did not detect harvest-induced evolution of personality in the positively size-selected line. We conclude that size-selective harvesting alters individual personality in this social fish.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 552-568 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Transactions of the American Fisheries Society |
| Volume | 148 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany; and Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Via del Cedro 38, Livorno 57122, Italy
Funding Information:
V.S. was supported by a Leibniz?DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) postdoctoral research fellowship (Number 91632699). We are grateful to Benjamin Laschinski for his help during an initial phase of this project and the collection of experimental videos. J.A. was supported by a Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral grant funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness (IJCI-2016-27681). C.D.-G. was funded by a fellowship from the Spanish National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology. S.U.H. was funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. A.E.H. was supported by a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We thank the reviewers for thoughtful feedback that improved our manuscript. R.A., S.U.H., and A.D.M.W. conceived the experiment. V.S., K.F., C.T.M., and C.D.-G. conducted the experiment and behavioral analysis. V.S., J.A., and A.E.H. performed statistical analyses. V.S. and R.A. mainly interpreted the results and wrote the manuscript, with feedback from all other authors. There is no conflict of interest declared in this article.
Funding Information:
V.S. was supported by a Leibniz–DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) postdoctoral research fellowship (Number 91632699). We are grateful to Benjamin Laschin-ski for his help during an initial phase of this project and the collection of experimental videos. J.A. was supported by a Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral grant funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness (IJCI-2016-27681). C.D.-G. was funded by a fellowship from the Spanish National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology. S.U.H. was funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. A.E.H. was supported by a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We thank the reviewers for thoughtful feedback that improved our manuscript. R.A., S.U.H., and A.D.M.W. conceived the experiment. V.S., K.F., C.T.M., and C.D.-G. conducted the experiment and behavioral analysis. V.S., J.A., and A.E.H. performed statistical analyses. V.S. and R.A. mainly interpreted the results and wrote the manuscript, with feedback from all other authors. There is no conflict of interest declared in this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Fisheries Society