Narrator: This is Science Today. Commercial harvesting of fish
and wildlife is quickly reshaping the wild populations that
remain due to the practice of harvesting vast numbers of species
and targeting large, reproductively mature individuals. Those
were the findings of a novel study led by Chris Darimont of the
University of California, Santa Cruz, which coincidentally was
released during the 200th year of Charles Darwin's birth.
Darimont: This work comes at a timely period in which scientists
are recognizing that Darwin was indeed right - and in fact,
organisms can change within populations very, very quickly and
as it turns out, our work shows that among the most rapidly
changing organisms on the planet, ones that are changing so fast
that even Darwin might be shocked, really underscores the
presence and power of natural selection acting in an
increasingly unnatural world. A world in which humans are
becoming a dominant selective force. Narrator: For Science
Today, I'm Larissa Branin.