Postglacial recolonization of the Southern Ocean by elephant seals occurred from multiple glacial refugia

The Southern Ocean is warming more rapidly than other parts of our planet.
How this region’s endemic biodiversity will respond to such changes can be
illuminated by studying past events, through genetic analyses of
time-series data sets including historic and fossil remains.
Archaeological and subfossil remains show that the southern elephant seal
(Mirounga leonina) was common along the coasts of Australia and New
Zealand in the recent past. This species is now mostly confined to
sub-Antarctic islands and the southern tip of South America. We analysed
ancient seal samples from Australia (Tasmania), New Zealand, and the
Antarctic mainland to examine how southern elephant seals have responded
to a changing climate and anthropogenic pressures during the Holocene. Our
analyses show that these seals formed part of a broader Australasian
lineage, comprising seals from all sampled locations from the south
Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. Our study demonstrates that southern
elephant seal populations have dynamically altered both range and
population sizes under climatic and human pressures, over surprisingly
short evolutionary timeframes for such a large, long-lived mammal.