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According to a Purdue University study on the genetic resources of these animals, the hope of an alarming number of gray whales in the western Pacific Ocean could be based on their cousins located in the east.
Andrew DeWoody, Professor in the Department of Forests and Natural Resources and the Department of Biological Sciences, and Anna Brüniche-Olsen, Postdoctoral Researcher at DeWoody's Laboratory, wanted to understand how the burgeoning population of Gray Whales in Eastern coast of California and Mexico – is connected with about 200 gray whales from the west along the Russian coast.
"At any given time, there is a huge disparity in the number of whales in each place, and some people think that the intense commercial hunting conducted by the Russians and the Japanese in the 1950s could have wiped out the entire population of the west. "said DeWoody. "So it is possible that a few have survived and their population is growing Some may be scattered from the East to form the population of the West today. It could also be a combination of both. "
DeWoody and Brüniche-Olsen compared the genotypes of 77 western and 135 eastern gray whales and found that both populations had diverged genetically. Genotypes have distinct alleles – gene variations – in each group. The separation is similar to the levels sometimes observed between distinct subspecies.
The analysis also shows, however, that there is some genetic mix. Whales have been observed crossing the Pacific Ocean and genetic data show that there appears to be at least some crossbreeding among the populations.
"This is good news.If you have a tiny population, a critically endangered population, as we see in the west, you want to maintain the flow of genes and make sure that They do not lose their genetic diversity, "said Brüniche-Olsen. "There seems to be a gene flow between the two, and even if the population is different, they are not completely separated."
The results, reported in the newspaper Letters of biology, reveal that both whale populations possess a significant amount of genetic diversity, which is particularly important for endangered western gray whales.
Authors will monitor subgroups to see if they continue to diverge or if interpenetration will result in loss of distinct groups.
"Maybe they'll become a single gene pool in the future," DeWoody said. "Or they could be very different and at one point will no longer be together one with the other."
The findings could also inform the new standards of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains the Red List, an exhaustive list of endangered animals around the world. DeWoody is involved in an IUCN group that is developing guidelines on the use of genetics to determine the threat level for animals such as gray whales.
"As we have seen with gray whales, it is much more complicated than the number of animals in the west and east," DeWoody said. "The use of genetics will prove to be a better method for understanding the population structures of endangered species and how these could be affected by human pressures or by natural processes such as than ocean currents. "
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