High potential for using DNA from ancient herring bones to inform modern fisheries management and conservation.

ABSTRACT: Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) are an abundant and important component of the coastal ecosystems for the west coast of North America. Current Canadian federal herring management assumes five regional herring populations in British Columbia with a high degree of exchange between units, and few distinct local populations within them. Indigenous traditional knowledge and historic sources, however, suggest that locally adapted, distinct regional herring populations may have been more prevalent in the past. Within the last century, the combined effects of commercial fishing and other anthropogenic factors have resulted in severe declines of herring populations, with contemporary populations potentially reflecting only the remnants of a previously more abundant and genetically diverse metapopu

SUBMITTER: Speller CF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3511397 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature