Population structure and resilience of Cuvier's and Blainville's beaked whales
Natacha Aguilar, ULL, Morten Olsen, Copenhagen University, Oscar Gaggiotti, University of St Andrews and Emma Carroll, University of Auckland, were awarded a grant from the Office of Naval Research to:
- Undertake a global analysis of population structure and genetic diversity of Blainville’s and Cuvier’s beaked whales
- Conduct a paired-site comparison of population and social structure in ‘impacted’ and ‘semi-pristine’ areas
Aubrie Booth is conducting research into the first aim as part of her PhD student that is co-supervised between Auckland, St Andrews and ULL.
![](https://whalednalab.auckland.ac.nz/files/2018/12/EH_2017.05.23_RandyGonzalez-573-20kgsd1.jpg)
International Tissue Archive for Beaked Whales
Beaked whales are hard to study. Our work is based on the contribution of dozens of collaborators who have collected samples from stranded or beach cast whales over many years. To ensure this collection is available for others to use, we have established the International Tissue Archive for Beaked Whales. More on this to come.