ArticleMolecular ecology2014
Population genomics of the killer whale indicates ecotype evolution in sympatry involving both selection and drift.
Article in Molecular ecology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- An Assessment of Allelic and SNP Bias in a Genome-Wide SNP Enrichment Kit for Killer Whales.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Characterization of Mitochondrial Genomes and Evolutionary Relationships in TwoEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Genome Assembly of Gangetic Dolphin (Platanista gangetica) Reveals Signature of Regressive Evolution.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Social and genetic connectivity despite ecological variation in a killer whale network.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Revised taxonomy of eastern North Pacific killer whales (Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Genomic Divergence and the Evolution of Ecotypes in Bottlenose Dolphins (Genus Tursiops).Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Selection on ancestral genetic variation fuels repeated ecotype formation in bottlenose dolphins.Science advances · 2021Article
- Evidence of local adaptation despite strong drift in a Neotropical patchily distributed bromeliad.Heredity · 2021Article
- An Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphin Genome Reveals Insights into Chromosome Evolution and the Demography of a Vulnerable Species.iScience · 2020Article
- Population structure of Apodemus flavicollis and comparison to Apodemus sylvaticus in northern Poland based on RAD-seq.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Shared genomic outliers across two divergent population clusters of a highly threatened seagrass.PeerJ · 2019Article
- Killer whales (Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Oceanographic variation influences spatial genomic structure in the sea scallop,Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Eco-Evolutionary Processes Generating Diversity Among Bottlenose Dolphin,Evolutionary biology · 2018Article
- Gene-culture coevolution in whales and dolphins.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Lineage divergence, local adaptation across a biogeographic break, and artificial transport, shape the genetic structure in the ascidian Pyura chilensis.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Article
- Killer whales differentiating in geographic sympatry facilitated by divergent behavioural traditions.Heredity · 2016Article
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10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolution of diversity in the marine ecosystem is poorly understood, given the relatively high potential for connectivity, especially for highly mobile species such as whales and dolphins. The killer whale (Orcinus orca) has a worldwide distribution, and individual social groups travel over a wide geographic range. Even so, regional populations have been shown to be genetically differentiated, including among different foraging specialists (ecotypes) in sympatry. Given the strong matrifocal social structure of this species together with strong resource specializations, understanding the process of differentiation will require an understanding of the relative importance of both genetic drift and local adaptation. Here we provide a high-resolution analysis based on nuclear single-nucleotide polymorphic markers and inference about differentiation at both neutral loci and those potentially under selection. We find that all population comparisons, within or among foraging ecotypes, show significant differentiation, including populations in parapatry and sympatry. Loci putatively under selection show a different pattern of structure compared to neutral loci and are associated with gene ontology terms reflecting physiologically relevant functions (e.g. related to digestion). The pattern of differentiation for one ecotype in the North Pacific suggests local adaptation and shows some fixed differences among sympatric ecotypes. We suggest that differential habitat use and resource specializations have promoted sufficient isolation to allow differential evolution at neutral and functional loci, but that the process is recent and dependent on both selection and drift.
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