Reversing Undesirable Fish Evolution 216
TaeKwonDood writes "Your granddad's approach to fishing — throw the little 'uns back — may have hurt their evolution, but we can reverse that, says a group of researchers, with a change of policy.
Fish have been 'reprogramming' themselves to be smaller and live longer. Welcome to evolutionary dynamics, Lamarck. But, no, they are serious. And it can be fixed within 12 generations. What do the smart people out there think about this? Are they using the term 'evolution' the wrong way?"
See the same things with elephant tuskers ... (Score:5, Interesting)
For years, the elephants in southern India have been hunted for their tusks. Fifteen years ago, you could very well run into a lone tusker in the wild with metre long tusks.
But now of late, there are baby elephants being born who grow up to be fertile males without the large tusks. With tiny foot long points out of their mouths, instead of something resembling the original giants [wikipedia.org] that I used to love.
It's almost as if the poachers are even more of a significant selection force than nature and female preference put together.
Human to Crocodile to Human (Score:4, Interesting)
Technically they are correct, in practice I have my doubts. It is hard to get all the variables in a breeding programme to act in line. Ask any dog breeder.
I once was asked by someone from J. Witnesses if I could transform a human into a crocodile. Sure I said, just give me some 300 million years and I might succeed. And, give give me another 300 million years and I may even get it back to a human.
Me, the magician!
flawed methodology (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA describes a closed study of a population of fish. It's not an examination of wild populations of fish or an analysis of trends in wild populations. Extrapolating their observations from the closed population and applying them to the wild populations isn't accurate.
Commercial fishing is performed with nets (or longlines) and does not discriminate based on size. Everything in the net goes into the hold. Any non-target fish are discarded after they are dead. Sport fishing does discriminate based on size, but doesn't have a significant impact on saltwater fish. Also, larger fish are usually the smarter fish that have avoided anglers' lures, etc. which is a phenomena that isn't accounted for in this study.
Seth
This is why I oppose hunting (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't oppose hunting on moral or ethical grounds. And I eat meat like nobody's business. My problem with hunting is that humans have obtained such an imbalance of power such that, unlike in the wild, where predators prey on the weak, humans only hunt the strong. We shoot the biggest buck, the biggest bear, the biggest whatever. We are removing the best genes from the gene pool. It's "survival of the weakest", and the long term consequences cannot be good.
Not evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
This is no more evolution than the development of different breeds of dogs, which are all the same species, was evolution. Take a population and select a specific trait. Breed the population to amplify that trait.
Take a population of dogs. Bread the population to be big, and you end up with a population that is bigger and bigger. Eventually, you end up with great danes, mastifs, etc.
Continue this kind of divergent breeding long enough, with a large enough group of traits and one might be able to force evolutionary change and the creation of different species.
This is an example of change due to environmental pressure. But, the pressure has not been applied long enough to make the change permanent or complete.
The article shows a simplistic understanding of the Theory of Evolution and a simplistic and misinformed interpretation of the data.
Heikegani (Samurai Crab) (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_crab
Dr. Dmitry K. Belyaev (Score:1, Interesting)
Did a similar thing (by accident) by 'evolving' a fox breed to a new species of dogs over 10 fox generations (10 years).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Belyaev