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Body size is a key component of individual fitness and an important factor in the structure and functioning of populations and ecosystems. Disentangling the effects of environmental change, harvest and intra‐ and inter‐specific trophic effects on body size remains challenging for populations in the wild. Herring in the Northwest Atlantic provide a strong basis for evaluating hypotheses related to these drivers given that they have experienced significant warming and harvest over the past century, while also having been exposed to a wide range of other selective constraints across their range. Using data on mean length‐at‐age 4 for the sixteen principal populations over a period of 53 cohorts (1962–2014), we fitted a series of empirical models for temporal and between‐population variation in the response to changes in sea surface temperature. We find evidence for a unified cross‐population response in the form of a parabolic function according to which populations in naturally warmer environments have responded more negatively to increasing temperature compared with those in colder locations. Temporal variation in residuals from this function was highly coherent among populations, further suggesting a common response to a large‐scale environmental driver. The synchrony observed in this study system, despite strong differences in harvest and ecological histories among populations and over time, clearly indicates a dominant role of environmental change on size‐at‐age in wild populations, in contrast to commonly reported effects of fishing. This finding has important implications for the management of fisheries as it indicates that a key trait associated with population productivity may be under considerably less short‐term management control than currently assumed. Our study, overall, illustrates the need for a comparative approach within species for inferences concerning the many possible effects on body size of natural and anthropogenic drivers in the wild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of fisheries-induced evolution on stock productivity and yield depend, to a large extent, on the general prospects for growth and survival. Here, we compare the selection pressures imposed by two distinct patterns of exploitation—principally targeting spawning or non-spawning aggregations—on age at maturity among 15 Canadian stocks of Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) that have exhibited a consistent pattern of length-at-age responses to common large-scale environmental drivers since the 1960s. In accordance with expectations for maturity-dependent harvesting, the establishment of a spawner-targeted fishery in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence coincided with a shift towards delayed maturity in both resident stocks, whereas stocks elsewhere subject to fisheries that also exploited juveniles more commonly exhibited trends towards earlier maturity. Despite these differences, we find that environmentally driven changes in length at maturation, combined with total mortality, may overwhelmingly determine lifetime reproductive success and possibly fitness. By linking phenotypic changes experienced in the juvenile period to simple correlates of egg production in mature age classes, our study highlights the importance of managing fisheries in the context of ubiquitous but contrasting environmental constraints on life histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]