Four centuries of commercial whaling eroded 11,000 years of population stability in bowhead whales
Michael V. Westbury, Stuart C. Brown, Andrea A. Cabrera, Hernán E. Morales, Bárbara Parreira, Jilong Ma, Moisès Coll Macià, Alba Rey‐Iglesia, Arthur S. Dyke, Camilla Hjorth Scharff‐Olsen, Michael B. Scott, Øystein Wiig, Lutz Bachmann, Kit Maureen Kovacs, Christian Lydersen, , Eline D. Lorenzen
This study uses fossil data and modeling to show that commercial whaling caused genetic diversity loss in bowhead whales, threatening their resilience to future climate change.
Cell · Mar 17, 2026Peer-reviewedEvolutionary Biology