Skip Navigation



Journal of Heredity Advance Access published online on June 4, 2007
Journal of Heredity, doi:10.1093/jhered/esm023
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
98/3/280    most recent
esm023v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Curtis, C.
Right arrow Articles by Karl, S. A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Curtis, C.
Right arrow Articles by Karl, S. A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The American Genetic Association. 2007. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Brief Communication

Sexing Pinnipeds with ZFX and ZFY Loci

Caitlin Curtis, Brent S. Stewart, and Stephen A. Karl

From the Department of Biology SCA 110, University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620 (Curtis and Karl); the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, 2595 Ingraham Street, San Diego, CA (Stewart); and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii, Manoa, PO Box 1346, Kaneohe, Hawaii, 96744 (Karl)

Address correspondence to Stephen A. Karl at the address above, or e-mail: skarl{at}hawaii.edu.

We developed and tested a protocol for determining the sex of individual pinnipeds using the sex-chromosome–specific genes ZFX and ZFY. We screened a total of 368 seals (168 crabeater, Lobodon carcinophaga; 159 Weddell, Leptonychotes weddellii; and 41 Ross, Ommatophoca rossii) of known or unknown sex and compared the molecular sex to the sex assigned at the time of biopsy sample collection in the Ross and Amundsen seas, Antarctica. We also screened 6 captive northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) and 2 captive California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) of known sex. The assigned sex and genetic sex agreed for virtually all seals. Indeed, discrepancies ranged from 0.0% to 6.7% among species. It is not clear, however, if the few mis-assignments of sex occurred in situ or in the laboratory. The assigned morphological and molecular sex might both be correct with the discrepancies owing perhaps to developmental effects of environmental pollution. A subset of individuals sequenced at both loci revealed no intraspecific sequence variation. There was, however, sequence variation among species at both loci, which allowed them to be uniquely identified with as few as 2 and as many as 31 nucleotides.

Corresponding Editor: C. Scott Baker

Received August 7, 2006
Accepted April 11, 2007


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.