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Allozymes from 46 loci were analyzed from chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) collected at 61 locations in southeast Alaska and northern British Columbia. Of the 42 variable loci, 21 had a common allele frequency <0.95. We observed significant heterogeneity within and among six regional groups: central southeast Alaska, Prince of Wales Island area, southern southeast Alaska – northern British Columbia, north-central British Columbia, and two groups in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Genetic variation among regions was significantly greater than within regions. The three island groups were distinct from each other and from the mainland populations. Allele frequencies were stable over time in 14 of 15 locations sampled for more than 1 yr. The geographic basis for heterogeneity among regions is confounded in part by spawning-time differences. The Prince of Wales and Queen Charlotte populations spawn in the fall; the mainland populations spawn mainly in the summer, although some overlap exists. Overall, most genetic diversity (97%) occurred within sampling locations; the remaining diversity was distributed almost equally within and among regions. Our genetic data may provide fishery managers a means to estimate stock composition in the mixed-stock fisheries near this boundary between the United States and Canada.

Low genetic divergence at neutral loci among populations is often the result of high levels of contemporary gene flow. Western Alaskan summer-run chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) populations demonstrate weak genetic structure, but invoking contemporary gene flow as the basis for the low divergence is problematic because salmon home to their natal streams and some of the populations are thousands of kilometers apart. We used genotypes from microsatellite and single nucleotide polymorphism loci to investigate alternative explanations for the current genetic structure of chum salmon populations from western Alaska. We also estimated current levels of gene flow among Kuskokwim River populations. Our results suggest that weak genetic structure is best explained by physical connections that occurred after the Holocene Thermal Maximum among the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and Nushagak drainages that allowed gene flow to occur among now distant populations.

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Summary Genetic tools are commonly used for conservation and management of at‐risk species. Individuals are often sampled from mixtures that are composed of many populations, which creates a need to assign individuals to their source. This can be problematic when the genetic divergence among source populations is weak but can be improved using adaptive genetic loci, which should show stronger levels of divergence. We previously reported a signature of positive selection in the mitochondrial‐encoded ND5 subunit of complex I in diverse taxa. The respiratory machinery of the mitochondria in salmonids is composed of more than 80 nuclear genes and there is substantial interaction between nuclear and mitochondrial expressed gene products. Recent studies report adaptive variation in mitochondrial function as well as co‐evolution between mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. We used potentially adaptive ND5‐based mitochondrial haplotypes to identify nuclear loci that would display increased levels of genetic divergence compared to neutral nuclear loci in chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta). Populations in a geographic area the size of France have previously demonstrated weak genetic divergence even after substantial discovery efforts by multiple laboratories for allozymes, microsatellites and SNPs over the last two decades. We used RAD‐based next‐generation sequencing and identified a nuclear‐encoded subunit of mitochondrial complex I that was a significant FST outlier and 14 other divergent nuclear markers that improve genetic assignment of individuals to their population of origin relative to assignments based on neutral markers alone. This work demonstrates how a known adaptive marker can be leveraged to increase the probability of identifying divergent markers for applied genetics tools that may be biologically linked to it.

Understanding stock and age-specific seasonal migrations of Pacific salmon during ocean residence is essential to both the conservation and management of this important resource. Based upon 11 microsatellites assayed on 265 individuals collected aboard international research surveys during winter 2009, we found substantial differences in the agespecific origin of chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) in the North Pacific Ocean. Overall, Asian stocks dominated the collections, however, ocean age 1 fish were primarily of Japanese origin and ocean age 2-3+ fish were predominantly of Russian origin. These results suggest that cohorts of chum salmon stocks migrate nonrandomly in the North Pacific Ocean and adjacent seas.

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