Data from: Mitogenomes and relatedness do not predict frequency of tool-use by sea otters

Many ecological aspects of tool-use in sea otters are similar to those in
Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins. Within an area, most tool-using dolphins
share a single mitochondrial haplotype and are more related to each other
than to the population as a whole. We asked whether sea otters in
California showed similar genetic patterns by sequencing mitogenomes of 43
otters and genotyping 154 otters at 38 microsatellite loci. There were six
variable sites in the mitogenome that yielded three haplotypes, one found
in only a single individual. The other two haplotypes contained similar
percentages (33 and 36%) of frequent tool-users and a variety of diet
types. Microsatellite analyses showed that snail specialists, the diet
specialist group that most frequently used tools, were no more related to
each other than to the population as a whole. The lack of genetic
association among tool-using sea otters compared with dolphins may result
from the length of time each species has been using tools. Tool-use in
dolphins appears to be a relatively recent innovation (less than 200
years) but sea otters have probably been using tools for many thousands or
even millions of years.