Fishing alters fish behaviour and features in exploited ecosystems

The research study was carried out in two different habitats: in the Cíes Islands (Vigo), a protected marine area where recreational fishing is not allowed, and in contiguous areas open to fishing. Photo: Lluís Cardona. Recerca Not all specimens of the same species are the same: there is a marked variability within the same population and sometimes these morphological differences are translated into a different behaviour. A study by the UB shows that fishing alters resource distribution and therefore, the behaviour of two typologies of the same fish species, Labrus bergylta . These results, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series , show that fishing hardens the understanding of how the features of species have evolved in exploited ecosystems, since it has an impact on how these act and feed from animals. Also, results ratify the importance of marine reservoirs to understand the original behaviour of these ecosystems before human intervention. The article is signed by Lluís Cardona, Àlex Aguilar and Fabiana Saporiti researchers from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute ( IRBio ) of the UB.