6.5 Corresp 015 MH 30/4/04 9:51 Am Page 15

6.5 corresp 015 MH 30/4/04 9:51 am Page 15

correspondence Managing fisheries in a changing climate No need to wait for more information: industrialized fishing is already wiping out stocks.

Sir — Your News story “Climate findings Nature 423, 280–283; 2003), which the hook”,but underline the need for let fishermen off the hook” (Nature 428, 4; occurred at different times in different more conservative management. 2004) offers the view that climate warming regions. Likewise, historical declines The abundance of spawning and and other environmental changes may of marine megafauna, such as large juvenile fish is estimated for most be just as important as overfishing in groundfish, turtles or mammals, have commercial fisheries each year using driving worldwide declines of fish stocks. always been related to the introduction scientific surveys and fisheries data. This It also suggests that climate may be of new fishing techniques and increased information already integrates actual responsible when depleted stocks fail to exploitation by European colonists climate influences and can thus be used recover, and that fishery management and (J. B.C.Jackson et al. Science 293, 629–637; to determine optimal fishing quotas. climate research should be more closely 2001), not to climate change. The problem is that scientific tied to each other. Spectacular collapses such as those of recommendations are almost always While it has been known for many years Eastern Canadian cod stocks, which at exceeded, and overfishing is allowed that climate variability can affect fish first were attributed to climate change, to continue unabated, despite better recruitment (the replenishment of stocks turned out on closer analysis to be solely knowledge. This problem is a political with juveniles), especially at the margins related to overfishing (R. A. Myers et al. one. There is already sufficient of species’ ranges, there is at present no Ecol. Appl. 7, 91–106; 1997). information available to manage evidence that worldwide declines are We emphasize that heavily overfished global fisheries sustainably, with or linked in any major way to climate stocks may be more sensitive to climate without any additional understanding change. Large declines in marine fish variability, because loss of diversity among of climate change. communities have always coincided locally adapted populations has impaired Boris Worm, Ransom A. Myers precisely with the onset of industrialized resilience. Indeed, these findings do not Biology Department, Dalhousie University, fishing (see R. A. Myers & B. Worm, let fishermen (or fishery managers) “off Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada

Colourful history of Japan’s rat resources Sir — As passionate rat researchers we were delighted to see the rat on the cover of the 1 April 2004 issue of Nature.It is

little known that Japan has a long history DIET LIBRARY,TIONAL JAPAN of rat research, including studies on coat- NA colour inheritance (see picture) that date back to the eighteenth century. Chingansodategusa,a Japanese guidebook on the breeding of fancy rats and mice, Rat race: illustrations from an eighteenth-century Japanese treatise on breeding rodents for colour. was published in 1787, during the Edo period, when Japan’s civilization was potential to save rat researchers all over the small number of the more than 2,800 isolated from the rest of the world. Japan world valuable time, money and animals. inbred, recombinant inbred, congenic, is still an island but, we hope, is not so Tadao Serikawa consomic or transgenic strains currently isolated today. Institute of Laboratory Animals, Graduate School of available at the Jackson Laboratory in Your News Feature “The Renaissance Medicine, Kyoto University, Yoshidakonoe-cho, Maine (www.jax.org) and it soon becomes rat” (Nature 428, 464–466; 2004) hailed Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan apparent that not all mice “just don’t have a remarkable rodent, but it did not a plan”,nor are all mice particularly mention a modern Japanese contribution aggressive. Mouse strains range from the to its research: the National Bio Resource very docile, such as A/J, to the very Project for the Rat (www.anim.med.kyoto- Multiskilled mouse rivals aggressive, such as NZB/B1NJ, and from u.ac.jp/nbr). This rat-strain repository, Renaissance rat the not-so-smart, such as LP/J, to strains one of the largest in the world, currently that perform quite well on various tests of has more than 200 rat strains, which are Sir — The laboratory rat has obviously complex learning: C57BL6/J, for example. freely distributed — at no cost except made immeasurable contributions to Indeed, a similar range of responses shipping — to any interested rat biomedical science and will continue to do can be found for any other behaviour of researcher worldwide. so as long as humans conduct biological interest, and it is this amazingly diverse In addition, we also provide a database research. There are many considerations in behavioural repertoire that has made the for more than 100 different phenotype the choice of a model organism, and rats mouse extremely useful for studies of the parameters of the rat strains. This allows certainly have their advantages, such as genetic basis of variation in behaviour (see for strain ranking, a method by which the their relatively large size. But to suggest, as Crawley et al. Psychopharmacology 132, parameters are sorted and unexpected your News Feature “The Renaissance rat” 107–124; 1997). abnormal values in reference strains can be (Nature 428, 464–466; 2004) does, that the Richard A. Radcliffe revealed. This project already covers almost rat is superior to the mouse for behavioural University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, 50 rat strains and will finally comprise 200. research is narrow-minded at best. Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 4200 East This sort of phenotype ranking has the One only needs to work with a fairly Ninth Avenue, Denver, Colorado 80262, USA