ArticleBiology letters2015
Low genetic diversity in pygmy blue whales is due to climate-induced diversification rather than anthropogenic impacts.
Article in Biology letters, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ocean-Wide Conservation Genomics of Blue Whales Suggest New Northern Hemisphere Subspecies.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Insights into Blue Whale (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Life history traits and dispersal shape neutral genetic diversity in metapopulations.Journal of mathematical biology · 2022Article
- Charting a course for genetic diversity in the UN Decade of Ocean Science.Evolutionary applications · 2021Article
- Life history, climate and biogeography interactively affect worldwide genetic diversity of plant and animal populations.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Evolutionary impacts differ between two exploited populations of northern bottlenose whale (Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Song variation of the South Eastern Indian Ocean pygmy blue whale population in the Perth Canyon, Western Australia.PloS one · 2019Article
- Incorporating non-equilibrium dynamics into demographic history inferences of a migratory marine species.Heredity · 2019Article
- From conservation genetics to conservation genomics: a genome-wide assessment of blue whales (Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Article
- Towards population-level conservation in the critically endangered Antarctic blue whale: the number and distribution of their populations.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Unusually low genetic diversity can be a warning of an urgent need to mitigate causative anthropogenic activities. However, current low levels of genetic diversity in a population could also be due to natural historical events, including recent evolutionary divergence, or long-term persistence at a small population size. Here, we determine whether the relatively low genetic diversity of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) in Australia is due to natural causes or overexploitation. We apply recently developed analytical approaches in the largest genetic dataset ever compiled to study blue whales (297 samples collected after whaling and representing lineages from Australia, Antarctica and Chile). We find that low levels of genetic diversity in Australia are due to a natural founder event from Antarctic blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus intermedia) that occurred around the Last Glacial Maximum, followed by evolutionary divergence. Historical climate change has therefore driven the evolution of blue whales into genetically, phenotypically and behaviourally distinct lineages that will likely be influenced by future climate change.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.