Evolutionary history of a Scottish harbour seal population

Abstract

<jats:p>Efforts to conserve marine mammals are often constrained by uncertainty over their population history. Here, we examine the evolutionary history of a harbour seal (<jats:italic>Phoca vitulina</jats:italic>) 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.</jats:p>

Chromosome-Length Assembly of the Baikal Seal (Pusa sibirica) Genome Reveals a Historically Large Population Prior to Isolation in Lake Baikal

“…Demographic history inference was performed using PSMC v0.6.5 [ 62 ], with the following parameters: -N25 -t15 -r5 -b -p ‘4 + 25 × 2 + 4+6′. We used mutation rate and generation time values based on scientific publications of the target species, or from closely related species [ 22 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ]. For mutation rate, we used values of 0.7 × 10 −8 , 1.2 × 10 −8 , and 2.5 × 10 −8 substitutions per site per generation, which is in the range of commonly used values for mammals [ 68 , 69 , 70 ].…”

Population structure and genetic connectivity reveals distinctiveness of Irish harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) and implications for conservation management

“…The generation time for harbour seals, i.e. the average interval between the birth of an individual and the birth of its offspring, has been reported to be between 8.75 and 15 years in western European waters (Nikolic et al, 2020; Silva et al, 2021). Given that samples from Ireland and Germany in the current study were collected between 2016 and 2019, and other international samples were collected between 1993 and 2007, the information on migration rates using this approach gives relatively recent information in this regard, i.e.…”

“…The generation time for harbour seals, i.e. the average interval between the birth of an individual and the birth of its offspring, has been reported to be between 8.75 and 15 years in western European waters (Nikolic et al, 2020;Silva et al, 2021).…”