The phylogenetic position of the 'giant deer' Megaloceros giganteus.

The giant deer, or 'Irish elk', has featured extensively in debates on adaptation, sexual selection, and extinction. Its huge antlers--the largest of any deer species, living or extinct--formed a focus of much past work. Yet the phylogenetic position of the giant deer has remained an enigma. On the basis of its flattened antlers, the species was previously regarded as closely related to the living fallow deer. Recent morphological studies, however, have challenged that view and placed the giant deer closer to the living red deer or wapiti. Here we present a new phylogenetic analysis encompassing morphological and DNA sequence evidence, and find that both sets of data independently support a sister-group relationship of giant and fallow deer. Our results include the successful extraction and sequencing of DNA from this extinct species, and highlight the value of a joint molecular and morphological approach.

Patterns of genetic variability at individual minisatellite loci in minke whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata populations from three different oceans.

The genetic variability at six cloned minisatellite loci was analyzed in minke whale populations from the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Antarctic Oceans. Three loci displayed only a few different alleles in each of the three populations, with heterozygosity ranging from 0.00 to 0.47, and three loci revealed many different alleles in at least two fo the three populations, with heterozygosity ranging up to 0.98. Using small sample sizes, samples from two adjacent Antarctic Management Areas were not found to differ significantly in allele frequencies at any of the six loci. The use of principal coordinate analysis to detect multilocus disequilibria was explored. No significant evidence was found of intrapopulation heterogeneity within the pooled Antarctic sample. Pronounced interoceanic differences were observed at every locus, confirming the existence of genetic isolation found earlier using more conventional marker systems. The populations from the three oceans appear to have diverged to such a degree that the hypervariable loci have had time to evolve independently and arrive at different evolutionary stages in different populations. The frequency of undetected "null" alleles is remarkably high in minke whale populations compared to human populations and is probably a result of the cloning protocol used. Minisatellite loci are shown to provide a powerful population genetic tool, supplying levels of resolution appropriate to different degrees of evolutionary divergence.