Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, UK.
Behav Genet. 2012 Mar;42(2):332-43. doi: 10.1007/s10519-011-9513-y. Epub 2011 Oct 21.
Sperm whale social groups can be assigned to vocal clans based on their production of codas, short stereotyped patterns of clicks. It is currently unclear whether genetic variation could account for these behavioural differences. We studied mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation among sympatric vocal clans in the Pacific Ocean, using sequences extracted from sloughed skin samples. We sampled 194 individuals from 30 social groups belonging to one of three vocal clans. As in previous studies of sperm whales, mtDNA control region diversity was low (π = 0.003), with just 14 haplotypes present in our sample. Both hierarchical AMOVAs and partial Mantel tests showed that vocal clan was a more important factor in matrilineal population genetic structure than geography, even though our sampling spanned thousands of kilometres. The variance component attributed to vocal dialects (7.7%) was an order of magnitude higher than those previously reported in birds, while the variance component attributed to geographic area was negligible. Despite this, the two most common haplotypes were present in significant quantities in each clan, meaning that variation in the control region cannot account for behavioural variation between clans, and instead parallels the situation in humans where parent-offspring transmission of language variation has resulted in correlations with neutral genes. Our results also raise questions for the management of sperm whale populations, which has traditionally been based on dividing populations into geographic 'stocks', suggesting that culturally-defined vocal clans may be more appropriate management units.
抹香鲸的社会群体可以根据其产生的尾音（短而刻板的 click 声模式）被归为特定的声族。目前尚不清楚遗传变异是否可以解释这些行为差异。我们研究了太平洋中共生的声族之间的线粒体 DNA（mtDNA）变异，使用从脱落的皮肤样本中提取的序列。我们从属于三个声族之一的 30 个社会群体中采样了 194 个个体。与抹香鲸的先前研究一样，mtDNA 控制区的多样性很低（π=0.003），我们的样本中仅存在 14 种单倍型。分层 AMOVA 和部分 Mantel 检验均表明，声族是母系群体遗传结构的一个更重要因素，甚至超过了地理因素，尽管我们的采样范围跨越了数千公里。归因于声族（7.7%）的方差分量比以前在鸟类中报道的要高一个数量级，而归因于地理区域的方差分量可以忽略不计。尽管如此，两个最常见的单倍型在每个声族中都有大量存在，这意味着控制区的变异不能解释声族之间的行为变异，而是与人类的情况相似，语言变异的亲子传递导致与中性基因相关。我们的结果也对抹香鲸种群的管理提出了质疑，传统上，抹香鲸种群的管理是基于将种群划分为地理“种群”，这表明文化定义的声族可能是更合适的管理单位。
