Marie Louis

Greenland Institute of Natural Resources

Beluga whales play a critical role in the subsistence economies and cultural heritage of Indigenous communities across the Arctic, yet the effects of Indigenous hunting on beluga whales remain unknown. Here, we integrate paleogenomics, genetic simulations, and stable δ ¹³ C and δ ¹⁵ N isotope analysis to investigate 700 y of beluga subsistence hunt...

Beluga whales play a critical role in the subsistence economies and cultural heritage of Indigenous communities across the Arctic, yet the effects of Indigenous hunting on beluga whales remains unknown. Here, we integrate paleogenomics and stable δ ¹³ C and δ ¹⁵ N isotope analysis to investigate 700 years of beluga subsistence hunting in the Macken...

Investigating the movements and site fidelity of individuals enhances our understanding of population ecology and structure. Killer whales occur around the coast of Iceland; however, information on the connectivity between different regions is limited to herring grounds, where they are observed frequently. In this study, we used photo-identificatio...

The Arctic is among the most climatically sensitive environments on Earth, and the disappearance of multiyear sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is predicted within decades. As apex predators, polar bears are sentinel species for addressing the impact of environmental variability on Arctic marine ecosystems. By integrating genomics, isotopic analysis, mor...

Parallel evolution provides strong evidence of adaptation by natural selection due to local environmental variation. Yet, the chronology, and mode of the process of parallel evolution remains debated. Here, we harness the temporal resolution of paleogenomics to address these long-standing questions, by comparing genomes originating from the mid-Hol...

The Spitsbergen population of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) was harvested to near extinction during the whaling era. Here, we show possible signs of recovery of the population by reporting observations of two calves in the Scoresby Sund polynya in East Greenland on 2 and 4 May 2022, and it is the first observation of this kind in this area si...

Parallel evolution provides among the strongest evidence of the role of natural selection in shaping adaptation to the local environment. Yet, the chronology, mode and tempo of the process of parallel evolution remains broadly debated and discussed in the field of evolutionary biology. In this study, we harness the temporal resolution of paleogenom...

Individuals of different sex or age can vary in their prey and habitat resource use due to differences in behaviour, life history, energetic need, or size. Harbour porpoises are small cetaceans that need to feed constantly to meet their high metabolic demands. In West Greenland, the species has a unique offshore, deep-water ecology. Here, we use bo...

The Arctic is among the most climatically sensitive environments on Earth, and the disappearance of multiyear sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean is predicted within decades. As apex predators, polar bears are sentinel species for addressing the impact of environmental variability on Arctic marine ecosystems. By integrating genomics, isotopic analysis, mor...

Accurate sex identification is crucial for elucidating the biology of a species. In the absence of directly observable sexual characteristics, sex identification of wild fauna can be challenging, if not impossible. Molecular sexing offers a powerful alternative to morphological sexing approaches. Here, we present SeXY, a novel sex-identification pi...

Narwhals and belugas are toothed whales belonging to the Monodontidae. Belugas have a circumpolar Arctic and sub-Artic distribution while narwhals are restricted to the Atlantic Arctic. Their geographical ranges overlap during winter migrations in the Baffin Bay area (Canada/West Greenland) and successful interbreeding may occur. Here, we employed...

Individuals of different sex or age can vary in their resource use due to differences in behaviour, life history, energetic need, or size. Harbour porpoises are small cetaceans that rely on a constant prey supply to survive. Here, we use bone collagen carbon (δ 13 C) and nitrogen (δ 15 N) isotope compositions to elucidate sex and size differences i...

Accurate sex identification is crucial for elucidating the biology of a species. Here, we present SeXY, a sex-identification pipeline, for very low-coverage shotgun sequencing data from a single individual. The method does not require a conspecific sex-chromosome assembly as reference. SeXY was specifically designed to utilise low-effort screening...

Studies of cetacean evolution using genetics and other biomolecules have come a long way—from the use of allozymes and short sequences of mitochondrial or nuclear DNA to the assembly of full nuclear genomes and characterization of proteins and lipids. Cetacean research has also advanced from using only contemporary samples to analyzing samples dati...

Studying repeated adaptation can provide insights into the mechanisms allowing species to adapt to novel environments. Here, we investigate repeated evolution driven by habitat specialization in the common bottlenose dolphin. Parapatric pelagic and coastal ecotypes of common bottlenose dolphins have repeatedly formed across the oceans. Analyzing wh...

Genomes of high latitude killer whales harbour signatures of post-glacial founding and expansion. Here, we investigate whether reduced efficacy of selection increased mutation load in founder populations, or whether recessive deleterious mutations exposed to selection in homozygous genotypes were purged. Comparing the accumulation of synonymous and...

Several Arctic marine mammal species are predicted to be negatively impacted by rapid sea ice loss associated with ongoing ocean warming. However, consequences for Arctic whales remain uncertain. To investigate how Arctic whales responded to past climatic fluctuations, we analyzed 206 mitochondrial genomes from beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas)...

The deep oceans of the Southern Hemisphere are home to several elusive and poorly studied marine megafauna. In the absence of robust observational data for these species, genetic data can aid inferences on population connectivity, demography and ecology. A previous investigation of genetic diversity and population structure in Gray's beaked whale (...

Intraspecific variation in resource use by individuals of different age, sex or size may reflect differing energetic requirements and physiological constraints. Males and females often show differences in diet owing to sexual size dimorphism, different life histories and/or habitat use. Here, we investigate how sex and size influence the long-term...

What are the mechanisms that allow species to extend their ranges and adapt to the novel environmental conditions they find in the newly available habitat? The study of parallel adaptation of pairs of populations to similar environments can provide great insights into this question. Here, we test for parallel evolution driven by niche specializatio...

The Arctic is warming at an unprecedented rate, with unknown consequences for endemic fauna. However, Earth has experienced severe climatic oscillations in the past, and understanding how species responded to them might provide insight into their resilience to near-future climatic predictions. Little is known about the responses of Arctic marine ma...

Oscillations in the Earth's temperature and the subsequent retreating and advancing of ice-sheets around the polar regions are thought to have played an important role in shaping the distribution and genetic structuring of contemporary high-latitude populations. After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), retreating of the ice-sheets would have enabled e...

Reconstruction of the demographic and evolutionary history of populations assuming a consensus tree‐like relationship can mask more complex scenarios, which are prevalent in nature. An emerging genomic toolset, which has been most comprehensively harnessed in the reconstruction of human evolutionary history, enables molecular ecologists to elucidat...

Reconstruction of the demographic and evolutionary history of populations assuming a consensus tree-like relationship can mask more complex scenarios, which are prevalent in nature. An emerging genomic toolset, which has been most comprehensively harnessed in the reconstruction of human evolutionary history, enables molecular ecologists to elucidat...

The functioning of marine protected areas (MPAs) designated for marine megafauna has been criticized due to the high mobility and dispersal potential of these taxa. However, dispersal within a network of small MPAs can be beneficial as connectivity can result in increased effective population size, maintain genetic diversity, and increase robustnes...

Animal social structures are shaped by external environmental factors and individual intrinsic behavioral traits. They represent a balance between the costs and benefits of group-living to maximize individual fitness. Bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, societies are fission–fusion with high variations in association strength, grouping patterns...

Population genetic studies of non-model organisms often rely on initial ascertainment of genetic markers from a single individual or a small pool of individuals. This initial screening has been a significant barrier to beginning population studies on non-model organisms (Aitken et al., Mol Ecol 13:1423–1431, 2004; Morin et al., Trends Ecol Evol 19:...

Determining discrete and demographically independent management units within wildlife populations is critical for their effective management and conservation. However, there is a lack of consensus on the most appropriate criteria to delimit such management units. A multi‐disciplinary, multi‐scale approach that combines tools informing in the short‐...

The dramatic increase in the application of genomic techniques to non-model organisms (NMOs) over the past decade has yielded numerous valuable contributions to evolutionary biology and ecology, many of which would not have been possible with traditional genetic markers. We review this recent progression with a particular focus on genomic studies o...

A large, but poorly studied, bottlenose dolphin community, Tursiops truncatus, inhabits coastal waters of Normandy (Normano-Breton Gulf, English Channel, France). In this study, the social structure and abundance of this community were assessed using photo-identification techniques. Like other bottlenose dolphin communities worldwide, this resident...

A large, but poorly studied, bottlenose dolphin community, Tursiops truncatus, inhabits coastal waters of Normandy (Normano-Breton Gulf, English Channel, France). In this study, the social structure and abundance of this community were assessed using photo-identification techniques. Like other bottlenose dolphin communities worldwide, this resident...

Environmental conditions can shape genetic and morphological divergence. Release of new habitats during historical environmental changes was a major driver of evolutionary diversification. Here, forces shaping population structure and ecotype differentiation (‘pelagic’ and ‘coastal’) of bottlenose dolphins in the North-east Atlantic were investigat...

Les patrons de structuration des espèces animales à fine et à large échelles peuvent être façonnés par des facteurs environnementaux et des traits comportementaux individuels. Les objectifs de cette thèse combinant des approches sociales, génétiques, isotopiques et morphométriques sont de décrire et comprendre i) les structures sociale, écologique...

Despite no obvious barrier to gene flow, historical environmental processes and ecological specializations can lead to genetic differentiation in highly mobile animals. Ecotypes emerged in several large mammal species as a result of niche specializations and/or social organization. In the North-West Atlantic, two distinct bottlenose dolphin (Tursio...

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