Abstract.-Although a great deal of effort has been expended to try to understand the consequences of fishing-induced selection by commercial fisheries, relatively little effort has been put into trying to understand the selective effects of recreational angling. We conducted a long-term selection experiment to assess the heritability of vulnerability to angling in largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides. Three successive generations of artificially selected largemouth bass were produced from a single experimental study population. Within each generation, individual adult largemouth bass were identified as having either high or low vulnerability to angling through a series of controlled catch-and-release angling trials. Individuals of each vulnerability group (high and low) were then selected from that population for breeding to produce the next generation. The response to selection for vulnerability to angling increased with each generation; that is, the magnitude of the difference between the high-and low-vulnerability groups of fish increased with each successive generation. Realized heritability was calculated as 0.146 (r 2 ¼ 0.995), indicating that the vulnerability of largemouth bass to angling is indeed a heritable trait. Our results indicate that recreational angling has the potential to alter the gene pool of wild fish populations, which may indirectly affect population characteristics such as survival, growth rate, and reproductive output as well as directly affecting angling success rates.
Fisheries-induced evolution and its impact on the productivity of exploited fish stocks remains a highly contested research topic in applied fish evolution and fisheries science. Although many quantitative models assume that larger, more fecund fish are preferentially removed by fishing, there is no empirical evidence describing the relationship between vulnerability to capture and individual reproductive fitness in the wild. Using males from two lines of largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) selectively bred over three generations for either high (HV) or low (LV) vulnerability to angling as a model system, we show that the trait "vulnerability to angling" positively correlates with aggression, intensity of parental care, and reproductive fitness. The difference in reproductive fitness between HV and LV fish was particularly evident among larger males, which are also the preferred mating partners of females. Our study constitutes experimental evidence that recreational angling selectively captures individuals with the highest potential for reproductive fitness. Our study further suggests that selective removal of the fittest individuals likely occurs in many fisheries that target species engaged in parental care. As a result, depending on the ecological context, angling-induced selection may have negative consequences for recruitment within wild populations of largemouth bass and possibly other exploited species in which behavioral patterns that determine fitness, such as aggression or parental care, also affect their vulnerability to fishing gear.ize-selective fishing, or even just an elevated level of fishing mortality, has the potential to induce rapid evolutionary change in a range of production-related traits in fish populations (1, 2). Theoretically predicted and empirically supported fisheriesinduced adaptive change involves the modification of life history traits, including reductions in age-and size-at-maturation, increases in reproductive investment, and changes in pre-and/or postmaturation growth rates (1-3). Changes in life history traits in response to fishing often collectively reduce adult size-at-age and fisheries yield and result in fish populations that only slowly rebound from overexploited states (4-7). There is little consensus, however, concerning the prevalence of fisheries-induced evolution and its relevance to management (1,(8)(9)(10). Perspectives range from calls for "evolutionarily enlightened management" (11) to positions that argue that evolutionary change induced by fishing is slow, thereby rendering it largely unimportant to fisheries management (9).One important tool to predict long-term population-level consequences of fisheries-induced evolution involves the construction and analysis of individual-based models (5, 12) or more simplified stage or age/size-structured (7) population models. Suitable models to study the potential for fisheries-induced evolution include ecological feedbacks resulting in density-and frequencydependent selection that shapes fitness landscapes and ev...
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