1 Patterns of Genetic Differentiation in Bowhead Whales (Balaena

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Okhotsk; Chukchi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.581.6719; http://www.iwcoffice.co.uk/_documents/sci_com/SC59docs/SC-59-BRG14.pdf

Analysis of 33 microsatellite loci for bowhead whales, including 22 new highly reliable markers, suggests present or historical departures from panmixia in Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas bowhead whales. Although these bowheads are clearly genetically distinct from bowheads in the Sea of Okhotsk, we find significant patterns of genetic inhomogeneity among the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas samples. These samples exhibit strong and widespread departure from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, including significant evidence of a birth year effect or a historical bottleneck consistent with gene drift after commercial exploitation or thousands of years earlier. There is also significant evidence that whales of detectably different ancestry intermingle during some spatio-temporal portions of the annual migration but partially segregate in other portions. The most notable such pattern is seen in migratory pulses passing Barrow in the fall. Estimates of Fst associated with our findings of genetic structure in Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas bowheads are extremely small compared to values for comparisons with the known separate stock in the Sea of Okhotsk, and are also smaller than values obtained by separating