Meeting Abstract
Size-selective harvesting of fishes is known to cause large changes in exploited species’ phenotypes, yet other possible macroevolutionary implications of this pervasive harvest remain unexplored. One proposed process that may be occurring is an “anthropogenic filter”, where human consumers preferentially exploit fishes with specific phenotypes, ecologies, or habitats. We test this hypothesis by quantifying the phylogenetic distribution of fished species on the largest fish phylogeny assembled with over 11,000 tips. We show that fished species are more closely related to each other than expected. Additionally, we find that although species are exploited across a range of body sizes, exploited lineages still tend to be larger than unexploited lineages. A large-scale analysis of habitat types also reveals that exploited species tend to occur in reef habitats and in coastal and shallow water systems. These findings are consistent with the “anthropogenic filter” hypothesis, suggesting that human exploitation of fishes could lead to unpredictable macroevolutionary impacts, as well as altered ecosystem function due to changes in the community structure of productive reef and coastal environments. Our results have broad implications for marine conservation efforts to mitigate these potentially negative effects of anthropogenic exploitation.
