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

• 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

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.