February 15, 2017 — The scallop is one of the largest edible molluscs, and gourmets consider it to be a great delicacy. To meet this demand, the fishing industry cultivates these shellfish in coastal aquafarms. In a new analysis, behavioural ecologists at Bielefeld University have confirmed that cultivated scallops developed their own genetic structure that differs from that of natural scallops.
The biologists studied a total of nine populations of scallops (Pecten maximus) along the coast of Northern Ireland. They are presenting their results this Wednesday (8.2.2017) in the research journal Royal Society Open Science.
“Of the nine scallop populations studied, only one shows a marked genetic difference from the others and that is the artificially cultivated type,” reports Joseph I. Hoffman, head of the Molecular Behavioural Ecology research group. New breeds are cultivated in, for example, mesh cages in coastal waters. Now and then, young scallops escape through the mesh and are thereby able to impact on natural populations. Biologists use the term population to describe a group of organisms of one species that live together in one area and are linked together genetically through reproduction over successive generations.