Major histocompatibility complex variation at three class II loci in the northern elephant seal

Abstract Northern elephant seals were hunted to near extinction in the 19th century, yet have recovered remarkably and now number around 175 000. We surveyed 110 seals for single‐strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and sequence variation at three major histocompatibility (MHC) class II loci ( DQ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Molecular Ecology
Main Authors: Weber, Diana S., Stewart, Brent S., Schienman, John, Lehman, Niles
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2004
Subjects:
Elephant Seal
Elephant Seals
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294x.2004.02095.x
https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1365-294X.2004.02095.x
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2004.02095.x
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Summary:Abstract Northern elephant seals were hunted to near extinction in the 19th century, yet have recovered remarkably and now number around 175 000. We surveyed 110 seals for single‐strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and sequence variation at three major histocompatibility (MHC) class II loci ( DQA , DQB and DRB ) to evaluate the genetic consequences of the population bottleneck at these loci vs. other well‐studied genes. We found very few alleles at each MHC locus, significant variation among breeding sites for the DQA locus, and linkage disequilibrium between the DQB and DRB loci. Northern elephant seals are evidently inbred, although there is as yet no evidence of correlative reductions in fitness.

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