Genetic rescue from protected areas is modulated by migration, hunting rate, and timing of harvest.

ABSTRACT: In terrestrial and marine ecosystems, migrants from protected areas may buffer the risk of harvest-induced evolutionary changes in exploited populations that face strong selective harvest pressures. Understanding the mechanisms favoring genetic rescue through migration could help ensure evolutionarily sustainable harvest outside protected areas and conserve genetic diversity inside those areas. We developed a stochastic individual-based metapopulation model to evaluate the potential for migration from protected areas to mitigate the evolutionary consequences of selective harvest. We parameterized the model with detailed data from individual monitoring of two populations of bighorn sheep subjected to trophy hunting. We tracked horn length through time in a large protected and a trophy-hunte

SUBMITTER: Lassis R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10286230 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature