Table 2.

Summary of benefits and limitations of selection experiments to understand evolutionary responses in fish populations

Benefits of selection experiments	Drawbacks of selection experiments
Standardize environmental variation Isolate agent of selection Measure rate of character evolution Control for genetic drift by replication of treated populations Monitor changes in variance Measure evolution of correlated characters Especially useful for complex characters like size Diverged lines become useful for additional tests of theory	Difficulty of maintenance and time required Taxonomic bias (short lived species required) – species not applicable Constant lab environments do not simulate variable conditions in the wild Field experiments involve simple or simplified environments Relatively small population sizes Difficulty of simulating fishing mortality