Population structure of bycaught harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) in Norway

ABSTRACT

The preference for coastal habitats makes the harbour porpoise, Phocoena phocoena, vulnerable to fisheries conflicts and hence prone to die due to entangling in fishing nets. An opportunistic sampling of such casualties (134 individuals) in Norwegian waters was used to assess the genetic population structure of the species by SNP-genotyping at 78 loci. The results of genetic clustering obtained for these individuals failed to identify more than one genetic group. Likewise, the individually-based F did not meet an Isolation-by-Distance pattern, thus supporting the conclusion that harbour porpoise in Norway probably belongs to a single genetic group or population.

KEYWORDS:

• Harbour porpoise
• Phocoena phocoena
• bycatch
• SNP
• population structure

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the fishermen that provided the samples and to Geir Dahle, who designed the SNP multiplexes. Arne Bjørge, Michaël Fontaine, Fernando Ayllón and Tomasz Furmanek are acknowledged for constructive comments, and Ralph Tiedemann for insightful discussions on kinship analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

María Quintela http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4762-2192

François Besnier http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7186-2121

Kevin A. Glover http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7541-1299

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials (i.e. Supplementary Material – Raw data).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the FRAM Centre flagship project 'The role of harbor porpoise in Norwegian coastal marine communities' (project number 14808-03) and by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research through the project 'Fish communities' (project number 15406).