Population structure of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales The
humpback whale was almost driven to extinction by commercial
whaling in the Southern Ocean. Little is known about the degree
of interchange among the remaining Southern Hemisphere
populations. This thesis aimed to assess the connectivity among
breeding grounds, feeding areas and migratory corridors of
humpback whales using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA markers. The
population structure of humpback whale populations in breeding
grounds across the South Pacific and eastern Indian oceans was
investigated, with an interest in the origins of whales in
eastern Polynesia, using an extensive collection of
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (n = 1,112; 470 base pairs
in length). Samples were obtained from living whales at six
breeding grounds: New Caledonia, Tonga, Cook Islands, French
Polynesia (Society Islands), Colombia and western Australia. We
found significant differentiation, at both the haplotype and
nucleotide level, among the six breeding groun