Abstract
Due to its demographic history, the northern elephant seal is a charismatic species with a peculiar place in conservation biology. After having being almost exterminated by commercial sealing, and having being repeatedly declared extinct, the species has enjoyed a period of expansion at sustained rate. The low genetic variability produced by the bottleneck is apparently not affecting the viability of the species, but implies practical problems in the application of standard molecular ecology tools due to the lack of polymorphic markers. We developed novel microsatellite markers that, although showing a rather small variability, are a valuable addition to the molecular toolbox that can be used to study the species.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Bartholomew GA, Hubbs CL (1960) Population growth and seasonal movements of the northern elephant seal, Mirounga angustirostris. Mammalia 24:313–324
Bonnell ML, Selander RK (1974) Elephant seals: genetic variation and near extinction. Science 184:908–909
Carretta JV, Forney KA, Muto MM, Barlow J, Baker JD, Hanson B, Lowry MS (2011) U.S. Pacific marine mammal stock assessments: 2010. NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS NMFS NOAA-TM-NMFS-SWFSC-476. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, La Jolla
Fabiani A, Galimberti F, Sanvito S, Hoelzel AR (2004) Extreme polygyny among southern elephant seals on Sea Lion Island, Falkland Islands. Behav Ecol 15:961–969
Glenn TC, Schable NA (2005) Isolating microsatelline DNA loci. In: Zimmer E, Roalson E (eds) Methods in enzymology, Molecular evolution: Producing the Biochemical Data Part B, vol 395, Academic Press, San Diego, pp 202–222
Kalinowski S, Taper M (2006) Maximum likelihood estimation of the frequency of null alleles at microsatellite loci. Conserv Genet 7:991–995
Lehman N, Wayne RK, Stewart BS (1993) Comparative levels of genetic variability in harbour seals and elephant seals. Symp Zool Soc Lond 66:49
Pastor T, Garza JC, Allen P, Amos W, Aguilar A (2004) Low genetic variability in the highly endangered Mediterranean monk seal. J Heredity 95:291–300
Rousset F (2008) GENEPOP’007: a complete re-implementation of the GENEPOP software for Windows and Linux. Mol Ecol Resourc 8:103–106
Rozen S, Skaletsky HJ (2000) Primer3 on the WWW for general users and for biologist programmers. In: Krawetz S, Misener S (eds) Bioinformatics methods and protocols: methods in molecular biology. Humana Press, Totowa, pp 365–386
Schuelke M (2000) An economic method for the fluorescent labeling of PCR fragments. Nat Biotechnol 18:233–234
Schultz JK, Marshall AJ, Pfunder M (2010) Genome-wide loss of diversity in the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal. Diversity 2:863–880
Stewart BS, Yochem PK, Huber HR, DeLong RL, Jameson RJ, Sydeman WJ, Allen SG, Le Boeuf BJ (1994) History and present status of the northern elephant seal population. In: Le Boeuf BJ, Laws RM (eds) Elephant seals. Population ecology, behavior and physiology. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 29–48
Van Oosterhout C, Hutchinson WF, Wills DPM, Shipley P (2004) MICRO-CHECKER: software for identifying and correcting genotyping errors in microsatellite data. Mol Ecol Notes 4:535–538
Weber DS, Stewart BS, Garza JC, Lehman N (2000) An empirical genetic assessment of the severity of the northern elephant seal population bottleneck. Curr Biol 10:1287–1290
Weber DS, Stewart BS, Schienman J, Lehman N (2004) Major histocompatibility complex variation at three class II loci in the northern elephant seal. Mol Ecol 13:711–718
Acknowledgments
For logistic support during the field work we would like to thank the Cooperativa Pescadores Nacionales de Abulon of Isla de Cedros. We also would like to thank the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales for granting the research licenses. We would like to thank Professor Faustino Camarena Rosales for providing to us laboratory space.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sanvito, S., Dueñes Meza, A., Schramm, Y. et al. Isolation and cross-species amplification of novel microsatellite loci in a charismatic marine mammal species, the northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris). Conservation Genet Resour 5, 93–96 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12686-012-9741-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12686-012-9741-3