High genomic diversity in the endangered East Greenland Svalbard Barents Sea stock of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus)

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The East Greenland-Svalbard-Barents Sea (EGSB) bowhead whale stock (Balaena mysticetus) was hunted to near extinction and remains Endangered on the International Union of Conservation of Nature Red List. The intense, temporally extensive hunting pressure may have left the population vulnerable to other perturbations, such as environmental change. However, the lack of genomic baseline data renders it difficult to evaluate the impacts of various potential stressors on this stock. Twelve EGSB bowhead whales sampled in 2017/2018 were re-sequenced and mapped to a previously published draft genome. All individuals were unrelated and void of significant signs of inbreeding, with similar observed and expected homo- and heterozygosity levels. Despite the small population size, mean autosome-wide heterozygosity was 0.00102, which is higher than that of most mammals for which comparable estimates are calculated using the same parameters, and three times higher than a conspecific individual from the Eastern-Canada-West-Greenland bowhead whale stock. Demographic history analyses indicated a continual decrease of Ne from ca. 1.5 million to ca. 250,000 years ago, followed by a slight increase until ca. 100,000 years ago, followed by a rapid decrease in Ne between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. These estimates are lower than previously suggested based on mitochondrial DNA, but suggested demographic patterns over time are similar.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer6118
TidsskriftScientific Reports
Vol/bind12
Antal sider11
ISSN2045-2322
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2022

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This work was funded by The Norwegian Research Council (ICE-whales Project No. 244488/E10), the Russian-Norwegian Environment Commission, the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the Independent Research Fund Denmark, Natural Sciences (Forskningsprojekt 1, Grant No. 8021-00218B, to EDL). Access to the Abel and SAGA high computing facilities was granted through the Norwegian Metacenter for Computational Science (NOTUR; project k9201nn). We thank K. Andaur, N. Cobbing, H. Edorsen, J. Engelstad, E. Gr?nnings?ter, H. Hansen, M. Haupt, J. Jones, S. Scotter and the crews on RV Lance and RV Kronprins Haakon for help with the fieldwork. We also thank Anders Skoglund for creation of the map and Mark Ravinet for suggestions for the variant calling and analyses.

Funding Information:
The PCA revealed no population structure within the EGSB stock (Fig. ). This was supported by the phylogenetic network (Fig. ), which showed a star-like (branching-from-the-centre) pattern, but no structuring of more closely related individuals.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

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