Familial social structure and socially-driven genetic differentiation in Hawaiian short-finned pilot whales

Social structure can have a significant impact on divergence and evolution within species, especially in the marine environment, which has few environmental boundaries to dispersal. On the other hand, genetic structure can affect social structure in many species, through an individual preference toward associating with relatives. One social species, the short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus), has been shown to live in stable social groups for periods of at least a decade. Using mitochondrial control sequences from 242 individuals and SNPs from 106 individuals, we examine population structure among geographic and social groups of short-finned pilot whales in the Hawaiian Islands, and test for links between social and genetic structure. Our results show that there are at least two geographic populations in the Hawaiian Islands: a Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) population and a Northwestern Hawaiian Islands/Pelagic population (FST and ΦST P &lt; 0.001), as well as an eastern MH...社会结构对物种种内的分化与演化具有显著影响，这在海洋环境中尤为突出——海洋环境中限制个体扩散的环境屏障相对匮乏。另一方面，诸多物种的遗传结构可通过个体对亲属社群的偏好性选择，反作用于社会结构。高度社会化的短鳍领航鲸（Globicephala macrorhynchus）已被证实可形成至少稳定存续十年以上的社会群体。本研究依托242份个体的线粒体控制区序列，以及106份个体的单核苷酸多态性（Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, SNP）数据，对夏威夷群岛海域短鳍领航鲸的地理种群与社会群体结构展开分析，并检验社会结构与遗传结构之间的关联。研究结果显示，夏威夷群岛海域至少存在两类地理种群：夏威夷主群岛（Main Hawaiian Islands, MHI）种群，以及夏威夷西北群岛/远洋种群（固定指数FST和遗传分化指数ΦST均满足P < 0.001），同时还存在东MHI……