Poster Presentation Australian Society for Fish Biology Conference 2017

Contemporary and retrospective genomic analysis of white sharks, Carcharodon carcharias (#160)

Danielle Davenport 1 , Charlie Huveneers 2 , Einar Nielsen 3 , Michael Bennett 1 , Jennifer Ovenden 1
  1. University of Queensland, Buderim, QLD, Australia
  2. The Flinders University of South Australia, Bedford Park, South Australia
  3. Technical University of Denmark , Vejlsøvej , Silkeborg

The white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, is an apex predator that occupies a cosmopolitan distribution throughout temperate waters. Conservative life history traits and high anthropogenic pressures have contributed to the listing of C. carcharias in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and as ‘vulnerable’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, Category VU A1cd+2cd). Historical and contemporary abundance estimates for C. carcharias are suggested to be low with declines of up-to 99% identified within some populations. To date genomic resources have contributed to the evaluation of some C. carcharias populations including those from the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific and provided evidence for fine scale population structure. Given the importance of C. carcharias within the ecosystem, and increasing anthropogenic induced change in the marine environment, estimates of genetically based adaptation, population connectivity, genetic diversity and gene flow is needed to improve our understanding of global C. carcharias populations. Targeted capture is the parallel enrichment of pre-selected genomic regions of interest and has been used in the past to estimate the strength of selection in populations, infer local adaptation and identify signatures of selective sweeps. This project will use targeted capture on DNA extracted from contemporary and archival C. carcharias skeletal material held in museum and trophy collections around the world to (1) estimate the genetic effective population size and population connectivity; and (2) investigate signatures of adaptive evolution and selective sweeps across white shark populations.