Pedigrees can provide important data for abundance estimation by providing a means to infer the presence of individuals that might otherwise not be detected. Such information may be particularly important for endangered species, where the addition or removal of just a few individuals can make the difference between population growth and decline. Here, we use gametic mark‐recapture methods to incorporate pedigree information in...

Right whales (genus Eubalaena ) were among the first, and most extensively pursued, targets of commercial whaling. However, understanding the impacts of this persecution requires knowledge of the demographic histories of these species prior to exploitation. We used deep whole genome sequencing (~40×) of 12 North Atlantic ( E. glacialis ) and 10 Southwest Atlantic southern ( E. australis ) right whales to quantify contemporary...

While photo-identification is an effective tool to monitor individuals in wild populations, it has limitations. Specifically, it cannot be applied to very young animals before their identifying features have stabilized or to dead, decomposed animals. These shortfalls leave gaps in our understanding of survival, parentage, age structure, physical development, and behavioral variability. Here we report on 13 case studies of Nort...

Species monitoring and conservation is increasingly challenging under current climate change scenarios. For the North Atlantic right whale ( Eubalaena glacialis ) this challenge is heightened by the added effects of complicated and uncertain past species demography. Right whales once had a much wider distribution across the North Atlantic Ocean, although the degree to which right whales in the western and eastern North Atlanti...

Many species of whales went through recent bottlenecks due to commercial whaling. These declines were rapid and recent relative to the life spans and generation times of these species, raising questions regarding to what degree commercial whaling influenced the genetic characteristics of these populations. We analyzed mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from pre‐ and postwhaling samples from two populations that have arguably shown...

Alloparental care happens when a calf is cared for by an adult that is not their parent. Although alloparental care is common in social mammals, its prevalence is difficult to assess in cetaceans, and has not been studied in Globicephala melas . A population off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, has been studied from whale‐watching vessels since 1998, during July and August each year. From 2009 to 2011, we collected photo identificati...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were analyzed from 106 bowhead whale ( Balaena mysticetus ) specimens dating 471 ± 44 14 C b.p. –10,290 ± 150 14 C b.p. to evaluate whether historical changes in distribution and connectivity were detectable in levels of diversity and population structuring in the Central Canadian Arctic. The species has maintained levels of mtDNA diversity over 10,000 yr comparable to other nonbottlenecked...