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Chapter One: General Introduction
chapter. The manuscript derived from this chapter will be co-authored by C.S. Baker
and H. Kettles.
Results presented in the Chapters 4 and 5 were presented in December 2005 at the
Society for Marine Mammalogy conference at San Diego, US:
Oremus M., Kettles H., Schroeder C., Gales R., Steel D. and Baker C.S. (2005) ‘O
mother where art thou?’ Genetic investigation into mass strandings of longfinned
pilot whales. 16 th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine
Mammals. San Diego, USA, December 12-16, 2005
Chapter six describes the population structure of rough-toothed dolphins observed
in the nearshore waters of the Society Islands, French Polynesia. Photo-identification
data and levels of mtDNA diversity provide new insights into their social structure
when compared to results obtained on spinner dolphins and pilot whales. Similarly to
Chapter 2, I collected and processed all data for this chapter during three field
seasons in French Polynesia, between 2002 and 2004. A manuscript based on this
chapter is intended for submission to the journal Conservation Genetics:
Oremus M., Poole M.M. and Baker C.S. (in prep) Evidence of fine-scale population
structure in rough-toothed dolphins from the Society Archipelago, French
Polynesia.
Chapter seven provides some final conclusions, proposes future research following
the results presented in this thesis and reviews the completion of the primary
objectives of this study.
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