An indigenous religious ritual selects for resistance to a toxicant in a livebearing fish
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Publication Date
9-8-2010
Publication Title
Biology Letters
Volume Number
7
Issue Number
2
Abstract
Human-induced environmental change can affect the evolutionary trajectory of populations. In Mexico, indigenous Zoque people annually introduce barbasco, a fish toxicant, into the Cueva del Azufre to harvest fish during a religious ceremony. Here, we investigated tolerance to barbasco in fish from sites exposed and unexposed to the ritual. We found that barbasco tolerance increases with body size and differs between the sexes. Furthermore, fish from sites exposed to the ceremony had a significantly higher tolerance. Consequently, the annual ceremony may not only affect population structure and gene flow among habitat types, but the increased tolerance in exposed fish may indicate adaptation to human cultural practices in a natural population on a very small spatial scale.
Keywords
cavefish, adaptation, rotenone, barbasco, anthropogenic disturbance, Poecilia mexicana
Geographic Subject
Cueva del Azufre, Mexico
Document Type
Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0663
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Tobler, M.; Culumber, Z. W.; and Plath, M., "An indigenous religious ritual selects for resistance to a toxicant in a livebearing fish" (2010). KIP Articles. 5931.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/kip_articles/5931
