Project description

The effect of population harvesting such as fishing and hunting on both target and non-target species depends on the surrounding community. For example, do marine reserves allow exploited communities to recover when species with different mobility interact? In addition to reducing target species' abundances, harvesting affects target species indirectly because of the feedback from its interacting species. Thus, the type and strength of species interactions influence the effect harvesting has on, for example, the potential of populations to recover from exploitation and long-term evolutionary changes in species' traits.

To understand both the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of harvested species we therefore need to extend analyses to include the community it is embedded in. In this project we analyse the indirect effects of harvesting that result from species interactions. We focus both on ecological and evolutionary effects, using models of community dynamics and of adaptive trait dynamics in multi-species communities.

Members

Anders Wikström, Per Lundberg, Jörgen Ripa

Related publications