Bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, are large baleen whales that are characterized by an Arctic distribution. In order to provide proper management recommendations to the International Whaling Commission, a panel of twenty-five microsatellite markers was developed. This panel consisted of pure cytosine-adenine (CA) repeats and was selected for their ability to consistently amplify and for their consistency for allele designations. This panel was utilized to investigate stock structure within the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort population of bowheads. Over thirty reports and manuscripts utilized these data for providing management recommendations to the International Whaling Commision. From this work it was concluded that there is presently one stock of bowhead whales within the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort seas. This data was also utilized to examine the genetic relationships of the remaining extant bowhead populations. The microsatellite data, in combination with sequences from the mitochondrial control region and the NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 (ND1) region, were used to examine population structure. The Okhotsk Sea was identified as the most divergent population of bowheads. Relationships among the extant populations demonstrated high levels of effective gene flow between populations. Gene flow appeared to be female-biased in relation to the Okhotsk Sea, whereas gene flow between Canada and the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort populations appears to be equal between the bowhead whale sexes.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-184).

This thesis develops and applies nonlinear Bayesian inversion methods for localization of bowhead whales and environmental characterization, with quantitative uncertainty estimation, based on acoustic measurements from a set of asynchronous single-channel recorders in the Chukchi Sea. Warping analysis is applied to estimate modal-dispersion data from airgun sources and whale calls. Whale locations and the water-column sound-speed profile (SSP) and seabed geoacoustic properties are estimated using reversible-jump Markov-chain Monte Carlo sampling in trans-dimensional inversions that account for uncertainty in the number of SSP nodes and subbottom layers. The estimated SSP and seafloor sound speed are in excellent agreement with independent estimates, and whale localization uncertainties decrease substantially when jointly-inverting data from multiple whale calls. Bowhead whales are also localized using a fixed-dimensional inversion of time-difference-of-arrival data derived using cross-correlation for the same recorders. The nonlinear localization uncertainty estimates are found to depend strongly on the source locations and receiver geometry. / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.] -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-155). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-156).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This study reexamines the nuclear microsatellite analysis by Rooney et al. (1999a) of Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) to determine if this population underwent a genetic bottleneck as a result of 19th and early 20th Century commercial whaling. This investigation used more accurate laboratory techniques to score alleles, had a larger sample size that was divided into two groups (mainland Alaska and St. Lawrence Island (SLI)), and used a moderately different set of microsatellite loci which are more variable and thus, more informative. The results corroborate the findings of Rooney et al. (1999a) for mainland Alaska showing no evidence of a genetic bottleneck. However, the SLI data analyses provide conflicting conclusions. The Wilcoxon test is significant for a heterozygote excess (p = 0.042) suggesting that a genetic bottleneck has occurred. This is not substantiated by the exact tests of each locus or the table-wide sign test. There is a possibility that a bottleneck has occurred, but due to the small sample size this is not a definitive conclusion and warrants reanalysis with a larger sample size.

This study reexamines the nuclear microsatellite analysis by Rooney et al. (1999a) of Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) to determine if this population underwent a genetic bottleneck as a result of 19th and early 20th Century commercial whaling. This investigation used more accurate laboratory techniques to score alleles, had a larger sample size that was divided into two groups (mainland Alaska and St. Lawrence Island (SLI)), and used a moderately different set of microsatellite loci which are more variable and thus, more informative. The results corroborate the findings of Rooney et al. (1999a) for mainland Alaska showing no evidence of a genetic bottleneck. However, the SLI data analyses provide conflicting conclusions. The Wilcoxon test is significant for a heterozygote excess (p = 0.042) suggesting that a genetic bottleneck has occurred. This is not substantiated by the exact tests of each locus or the table-wide sign test. There is a possibility that a bottleneck has occurred, but due to the small sample size this is not a definitive conclusion and warrants reanalysis with a larger sample size.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the Internet.