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Northern Elephant seals have staged a remarkable comeback after narrowly escaping extinction by hunting, but new research reveals lasting genetic effects in the present population.

Hunted for the oil in their blubber, genetic analyses suggest that the hundreds of thousands of northern elephant seals that lived in the Pacific Ocean had been reduced to a population of fewer than 25 animals by the start of the 20th century.

The population has since recovered to around 225,000 individuals, but the new research—led by the universities of York and Bielefeld (Germany) and published in Nature Ecology and Evolution—suggests the drastic population decline led to the loss of many genes from the northern elephant seal's gene pool, impacting their genetic diversity and health.

Threat to survival

The researchers, who combined genetic data, health records, modeling of population sizes and genetic simulations to carry out the study, did not observe the same pattern in the closely related southern elephant seal, which did not experience a near-extinction event.

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