Range-wide variation in grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) skull morphology

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 3.02 MB, PDF document

  • Anders Galatius
  • Michelle Strecker Svendsen
  • Dolores Messer
  • Mia Valtonen
  • Michael McGowen
  • Richard Sabin
  • Vedrana Andersen Dahl
  • Anders Bjorholm Dahl
  • Olsen, Morten Tange

The large interspecific variation in marine mammal skull and dental morphology reflects ecological specialisations to foraging and communication. At the intraspecific level, the drivers of skull shape variation are less well understood, having implications for identifying putative local foraging adaptations and delineating populations and subspecies for taxonomy, systematics, management and conservation. Here, we assess the range-wide intraspecific variation in 71 grey seal skulls by 3D surface scanning, collection of cranial landmarks and geometric morphometric analysis. We find that skull shape differs slightly between populations in the Northwest Atlantic, Northeast Atlantic and Baltic Sea. However, there was a large shape overlap between populations and variation was substantially larger among animals within populations than between. We hypothesize that this pattern of intraspecific variation in grey seal skull shape results from balancing selection or phenotypic plasticity allowing for a remarkably generalist foraging behaviour. Moreover, the large overlap in skull shape between populations implies that the separate subspecies status of Atlantic and Baltic Sea grey seals is questionable from a morphological point of view.

Original languageEnglish
Article number126023
JournalZoology
Volume153
Number of pages7
ISSN0944-2006
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors

    Research areas

  • Foraging strategy, Geometric morphometrics, Intraspecific variation, Populations, Subspecies

ID: 315990837