Close genetic relatedness of whale sharks, Rhincodon typhus in the Indo-Pasific region

Abstract

The goal of our study was to evaluate genetic diversity of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) observed in Cenderawasih Bay, Indonesia, compared with that of whale sharks elsevhere in the Indo-Pacific region using mitochondrial DNA. We collected tissue samples from 31 whale sharks, virtually all adolescent males, in Cenderawasih Bay and then extracted, amplified, and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from the cytochrome oxidase 1 (COI) gene of the mtDNA COI gene. Genetic diversity of whale sharks in Cenderawasih Bay was low. We detected seven haplotypes and estimated haplotype diversity of 0.187 and nucleotide diversity at 0.002. The average number of pairwise differences was 0.254. These data suggest that the whale sharks that we encountered in Cenderawasih Bay were closely related and less related to whale sharks elsewhere in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean.