Data from: Investigating population genetic structure in a highly mobile marine organism: the minke whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata acutorostrata in the North East Atlantic ...

• Main Authors: Quintela, María, Skaug, Hans J., Øien, Nils, Haug, Tore, Seliussen, Bjørghild B., Solvang, Hiroko K., Pampoulie, Christophe, Kanda, Naohisa, Pastene, Luis A., Glover, Kevin A.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2015
• Subjects: Balaenoptera acutorostrata acutorostrata; minke whale; present; Balaenoptera acutorostrata; North Atlantic; North East Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6r4gg; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.6r4gg

Inferring the number of genetically distinct populations and their levels of connectivity is of key importance for the sustainable management and conservation of wildlife. This represents an extra challenge in the marine environment where there are few physical barriers to gene-flow, and populations may overlap in time and space. Several studies have investigated the population genetic structure within the North Atlantic minke whale with contrasting results. In order to address this issue, we analyzed ten microsatellite loci and 331 bp of the mitochondrial D-loop on 2990 whales sampled in the North East Atlantic in the period 2004 and 2007–2011. The primary findings were: (1) No spatial or temporal genetic differentiations were observed for either class of genetic marker. (2) mtDNA identified three distinct mitochondrial lineages without any underlying geographical pattern. (3) Nuclear markers showed evidence of a single panmictic population in the NE Atlantic according STRUCTURE's highest average likelihood ... : Minke whale_microsatellitesData collected in the field ...