World aquaculture diversity: origins and perspectives

Aquaculture diversity is universally considered one of the main aspects that make aquaculture different from land animal farming. A retrospective analysis on 68 years of FAO data on world aquaculture production shows that this aquaculture diversity study is the most powerful and exhaustive theoretical tool to investigate aquaculture origin, evolution and connections with the surrounding world. Aquaculture diversity investigated with Shannon index and Pareto principle shows its thermodynamic nature and reveals an unexpectable regularity that sheds new light on aquaculture, thus putting aquaculture in a perfect theoretical context together with fisheries. Species dominance, vicariance and redundancy must be considered for a functional description of aquaculture diversity. Aquaculture diversity is not biological diversity as an aquaculture species is not necessarily a biological species. Aquaculture diversity shows that aquaculture is a modern colonization of aquatic domain and it has recently reached its maximum value that is 428 ± 11 species, of which 29 ± 1 will produce 80% of global annual production. A temporal and geographical analysis of global aquaculture diversity reveals an original and hopefully enlightening vision of modern aquaculture and its perspectives.