Fisheries management as a Stackelberg Evolutionary Game: Finding an evolutionarily enlightened strategy.

ABSTRACT: Fish populations subject to heavy exploitation are expected to evolve over time smaller average body sizes. We introduce Stackelberg evolutionary game theory to show how fisheries management should be adjusted to mitigate the potential negative effects of such evolutionary changes. We present the game of a fisheries manager versus a fish population, where the former adjusts the harvesting rate and the net size to maximize profit, while the latter responds by evolving the size at maturation to maximize the fitness. We analyze three strategies: i) ecologically enlightened (leading to a Nash equilibrium in game-theoretic terms); ii) evolutionarily enlightened (leading to a Stackelberg equilibrium) and iii) domestication (leading to team optimum) and the corresponding outcomes for both the fis

SUBMITTER: Salvioli M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7817040 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature