Evaluating a putative bottleneck in a population of bowhead whales from patterns of microsatellite diversity and genetic disequilibria

• Main Authors: Alejandro P Rooney, Rodney L Honeycutt, Scott K Davis, James N Derr
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: Balaena mysticetus; Chukchi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1074.2049; http://www.personal.psu.edu/nxm2/1999%20Publications/1999-rooney-honeycutt-davis-derr.pdf

Abstract. A size-selected Balaena mysticetus genomic library was screened for clones containing simple sequence repeat, or microsatellite, loci. A total of 11 novel loci was identified. These loci were combined with a set of 9 published loci, for a total of 20 markers, and were scored across a sample of 108 bowhead whales from the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas population of bowhead whales. Genetic variability was measured in terms of polymorphism information content values and unbiased heterozygosity. From the latter, estimates of long-term effective population size were obtained. In addition, gametic phase disequilibrium among loci was investigated. Moderate to high levels of polymorphism were found overall, and the long-term effective size estimates were large relative to total population size. Tests of heterozygosity excess (Cornuet and Luikart 1996) and allele frequency distribution