A global cline in a colour polymorphism suggests a limited contribution of gene flow towards the recovery of a heavily exploited marine mammal.

ABSTRACT: Evaluating how populations are connected by migration is important for understanding species resilience because gene flow can facilitate recovery from demographic declines. We therefore investigated the extent to which migration may have contributed to the global recovery of the Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), a circumpolar distributed marine mammal that was brought to the brink of extinction by the sealing industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is widely believed that animals emigrating from South Georgia, where a relict population escaped sealing, contributed to the re-establishment of formerly occupied breeding colonies across the geographical range of the species. To investigate this, we interrogated a genetic polymorphism (S291F) in the melanocortin

SUBMITTER: Hoffman JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6227926 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature