Assessing strategies to minimize unintended fitness consequences of aquaculture on wild populations.

ABSTRACT: Artificial propagation programs focused on production, such as commercial aquaculture or forestry, entail strong domestication selection. Spillover from such programs can cause unintended fitness and demographic consequences for wild conspecifics. The range of possible management practices to minimize such consequences vary in their control of genetic and demographic processes. Here, we use a model of coupled genetic and demographic dynamics to evaluate alternative management approaches to minimizing unintended consequences of aquaculture escapees. We find that, if strong natural selection occurs between escape and reproduction, an extremely maladapted (i.e., nonlocal-origin, highly domesticated) stock could have fitness consequences analogous to a weakly diverged cultured stock; otherwise

SUBMITTER: Baskett ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3804241 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature