Evolutionary history of a Scottish harbour seal population

Natacha Nikolic; Paul Thompson; Mark de Bruyn; Matthias Macé; Claude Chevalet

doi:10.7717/peerj.9167

Evolutionary history of a Scottish harbour seal population

PeerJ. 2020 Jul 10:8:e9167. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9167. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Natacha Nikolic^{1

2}, Paul Thompson³, Mark de Bruyn⁴, Matthias Macé⁵, Claude Chevalet²

Affiliations

¹ ARBRE (Reunion Island Biodiversity Research Agency), Saint-Leu, La Réunion.
² Génétique Physiologie et Systèmes d'Elevage - UMR1388, INRAE, Castanet Tolosan, France.
³ Lighthouse Field Station, Sciences School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Cromarty, United Kingdom.
⁴ School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
⁵ Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Moléculaire et d'Imagerie de Synthèse - UMR 5288, CNRS, Toulouse, France.

Abstract

Efforts to conserve marine mammals are often constrained by uncertainty over their population history. Here, we examine the evolutionary history of a harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) population in the Moray Firth, northeast Scotland using genetic tools and microsatellite markers to explore population change. Previous fine-scale analysis of UK harbour seal populations revealed three clusters in the UK, with a northeastern cluster that included our Moray Firth study population. Our analysis revealed that the Moray Firth cluster is an independent genetic group, with similar levels of genetic diversity across each of the localities sampled. These samples were used to assess historic abundance and demographic events in the Moray Firth population. Estimates of current genetic diversity and effective population size were low, but the results indicated that this population has remained at broadly similar levels following the population bottleneck that occurred after post-glacial recolonization of the area.

Keywords: Evolution; Genetic; Seal.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by INRAE (FRANCE), Genotoul platform (FRANCE), and University of Aberdeen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.