Abstract
Although the majority of eastern North Pacific(ENP) gray whales migrate to feeding grounds inthe Bering and Chukchi Seas, some terminate themigration in more southerly areas such asBritish Columbia (BC). Long-term sightingstudies in Clayoquot Sound (CS), BC, indicatethat approximately 35–50 individuals exhibitlong-term fidelity to this site. To determinethe sex composition (based on genetic sexing)of CS gray whales and to assess whethermatrilineal site-fidelity occurs in CS, wecollected skin biopsy samples from 16 CSindividuals (`residents') and 41 samples fromother areas (representative of the overallpopulation in the ENP: `non-residents'). Atotal of 27 polymorphic sites defined 24haploytpes among the 57 samples sequenced forHV1 of the mtDNA control region. Thenucleotide and haplotype diversities of thesesamples were 0.017 (SE = 0.0012) and 0.94(SE = 0.0019), respectively. Neighbor-joininganalysis revealed five lineages each of whichcontained haplotypes that were observed in bothresidents and non-residents. Residents did notdiffer significantly from non-residents, and nosignificant sex-ratio bias was found. Thesedata suggest a level of diversity that isinconsistent with a severe historicalbottleneck, and given the available samplesize, do not indicate matrilineally directedfidelity to Clayoquot Sound.
Published Version
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