SynthesisProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Human influences on the strength of phenotypic selection.
Synthesis in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A global meta-analysis reveals higher variation in breeding phenology in urban birds than in their non-urban neighbours.Ecology letters · 2022Pooled it
- Geographically proximate rare species exhibit strong population divergence while maintaining intraspecific genetic diversity in Homoranthus (Myrtaceae).Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Phenotypic selection gradients in a tripartite plant interaction in southern South America.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- The role of human hunters and natural predators in shaping the selection of behavioural types in male wild turkeys.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- The potential for evolutionary rescue in an Arctic seashore plant threatened by climate change.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Is urbanization a driver of aboveground biomass allocation in a widespread tropical shrub, Turnera subulata (Turneroideae - Passifloraceae)?Journal of plant research · 2024Article
- Cities of the Anthropocene: urban sustainability in an eco-evolutionary perspective.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- The effect of experimental pollinator decline on pollinator-mediated selection on floral traits.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Proximity to oilseed rape fields affects plant pollination and pollinator-mediated selection on a co-flowering plant on the Tibetan Plateau.Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- The opportunity for selection: A slippery concept in ecology and evolution.The Journal of animal ecology · 2023Article
- Fish vulnerability to capture by trapping is modulated by individual parasite density.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Evolutionary effects of nitrogen are not easily predicted from ecological responses.American journal of botany · 2022Article
- Human impact on the recent population history of the elusive European wildcat inferred from whole genome data.BMC genomics · 2022Article
- Are behaviour and stress-related phenotypes in urban birds adaptive?The Journal of animal ecology · 2022Article
- Simulated trapping and trawling exert similar selection on fish morphology.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Ecological ramifications of adaptation to size-selective mortality.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Horn growth appears to decline under intense trophy hunting, but biases in hunt data challenge the interpretation of the evolutionary basis of trends.Evolutionary applications · 2021Article
- The battle between harvest and natural selection creates small and shy fish.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Does parental angling selection affect the behavior or metabolism of brown trout parr?Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Human activities are driving rapid phenotypic change in many species, with harvesting considered to be a particularly potent evolutionary force. We hypothesized that faster evolutionary change in human-disturbed populations could be caused by a strengthening of phenotypic selection, for example, if human disturbances trigger maladaptation and/or increase the opportunity for selection. We tested this hypothesis by synthesizing 1,366 phenotypic selection coefficients from 37 species exposed to various anthropogenic disturbances, including harvest. We used a paired design that only included studies measuring selection on the same traits in both human-disturbed and control (not obviously human-disturbed "natural") populations. Surprisingly, this meta-analysis did not reveal stronger selection in human-disturbed environments; in fact, we even found some evidence that human disturbances might slightly reduce selection strength. The only clear exceptions were two fisheries showing very strong harvest selection. On closer inspection, we discovered that many disturbances weakened selection by increasing absolute fitness and by decreasing the opportunity for selection-thus explaining what initially seemed a counterintuitive result. We discuss how human disturbances can sometimes weaken rather than strengthen selection, and why measuring the total effect of disturbances on selection is exceedingly difficult. Despite these challenges, documenting human influences on selection can reveal disturbances with particularly strong effects (e.g., fishing), and thus better inform the management of populations exposed to these disturbances.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.