A Brief and Preliminary Look at SNPs Data for some Bering-Chukchi- Beaufort Seas Bowhead Whales

We present preliminary analyses of 18 single nucleotide polymorphism markers (SNPs) for 106 bowhead whales from Barrow and St. Lawrence Island. We find no evidence for disequilibrium, population substructure, or genetic variation associated with temporal spacing of whales in the migration. Introduction We present here a preliminary examination of a small dataset of single nucleotide polymorphism markers (SNPs) obtained from samples from 126 bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) from the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas region. These data were developed by Morin et al. (2007), using the methods of Morin and McCarthy (2007). Primary analyses of these data are given by Morin et al. (2007); we offer only some preliminary secondary examinations here. The main goal of our paper is to provide a first look at one analysis not provided by those authors related to a temporal lag autocorrelation feature found in microsatellite analysis of fall Barrow samples (Jorde et al., 2007; Givens and Ozaksoy, 2006; Givens et al. 2007). We also confirm some basic findings of Morin et al. (2007) using a slightly different set of samples and SNP loci. We analyzed data for 18 SNP loci from 106 bowhead whales. The samples were collected from three sites: Barrow and the villages of Savoonga and Gambell on St. Lawrence Island (SLI). The Barrow data were all collected during the spring migration period. The Savoonga and Gambell data came from whales sampled during both the fall and spring migrations, as well as from baleen samples and whale skulls obtained from villagers and discards from historical aboriginal hunts. Some adjustments were made to the raw data prior to analysis. In the original dataset there were 126 whales typed on 19 loci. First, 16 individuals were deleted from the dataset because they were found to be duplicates of whales already in the dataset. Second, two fetuses from Barrow and 2 fetuses from Savoonga were deleted because data from their mothers were already in the dataset. Third, one locus (Bmys402M56) was deleted from the data set because it was sex-linked. Table 1 shows the numbers of whales analyzed using the 18 remaining SNPs loci. 1 Dept. of Statistics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO 80523. 2 Southwest Fisheries Science Center, 8604 La Jolla Shores Dr., La Jolla CA 92037. 3 North Slope Borough Dept. of Wildlife Management, PO Box 69, Barrow AK 99723.