Pinsky Lab members Brendan Reid and Malin Pinsky (in collaboration with Bastiaan Star of the University of Oslo, Norway) recently published a paper in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B showing genomic evidence for rapid evolution in Atlantic cod over the course 20th century. Previous work on cod had found changes in size and growth patterns in response to intense fishing but could not attribute these shifts to large changes in specific genes. By applying a novel analytical method to DNA from century-old cod, we found evidence for small, parallel shifts in a large number of genes across populations in Canada and Norway, implicating a genome-wide response rather than changes in a few genes. This finding represents the first genomic evidence for fisheries-induced evolution in cod and suggests that as fishing pressure is removed, cod may evolve towards previous patterns of growth, spurring hope for a full return of this economically important fishery.
Cod caught by the tradition East Atlantic fishery drying in Lofoten, Norway can be seen in the photo above.
The publication can be found using the following link: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0190