The Human Impact of Evolution of “Prey” Species.

I read this interesting article about how human fishing, hunting and agricultural practices are causing negative evolutionary traits to form in many species of plants and animals.  This article is primarily focused on studying fish populations and how over fishing is causing genetic changes in fish populations.  Fish are now becoming smaller and are becoming less healthy in general; this is because the fisherman are killing off the larger healtherfish.  This means that the remaining fish are small and have unfavorable characteristics.  Since only these weak fish are left to reproduce the population gets weaker as a whole.  One may think that it would take thousands of years for this to have a huge impact; but studies show that this genetic change in the fish population happens 300% faster than in natural systems and 50 times faster than in environments altered by pollution.  This study showed this phenomenon is happening to interridal invertabrates, bighorn sheep, and in two different plant species as well.  Here is a link to the news article and not the actual study: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090112201123.htm.  If I can find the actual paper that this article is about I will post it.

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