Commercial whaling in the genetic diversity through DNA analysis of discarded whale bones”>20th century decimated populations of large whales but also appears to have had a lasting impact on the genetic diversity of today’s surviving whales, new research from Oregon State University shows.
Researchers compared DNA from a collection of whale bones found on beaches near abandoned whaling stations on South Georgia Island in the south Atlantic Ocean to DNA from whales in the present-day population and found strong evidence of loss of maternal DNA lineages among blue and humpback whales.
“A maternal lineage is often associated with an animal’s cultural memories such as feeding and breeding locations that are passed from one generation to the next,” said the study’s lead author, Angela Sremba, who conducted the research as part of her doctoral studies at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. “If a maternal lineage is lost, that knowledge is likely also lost.”
The findings were published recently in the Journal of Heredity.
South Georgia is a remote island about 800 miles southeast of the Falkland Islands and home to several whaling stations operating from the turn of the century through the 1960s. In a little over 60 years, more than 2 million whales were killed throughout the Southern Hemisphere, of which 175,000 were killed near South Georgia.
2023-10-02 22:48:03
Article from phys.org