Population Structure and Identification of North Pacific Ocean Chum Salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) Revealed by an Analysis of Minisateliite DNA Variation

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Abstract
We examined geographic variability in minisatellite DNA in chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) from 42 populations from the North Pacific Ocean to (1) determine the extent of regional population structure at minisatellite loci and (2) assess the ability of minisatellite variability to determine the geographic origin in individual chum salmon. Restriction fragments from 1.6 to 13.6 kilobase pairs in molecular weight were resolved with a minisatellite probe. The fragments were inherited from parent to offspring and appeared to represent segregation at two linked loci. Minisateliite DNA variability was negligible between annual samples from the same rivers, and chum salmon fell into three regional population groupings: (i) Japanese, (ii) Russian/Yukon River, and (iii) southeastern Alaska/British Columbia salmon. These regional groupings probably reflect historical patterns of postglacial dispersal of chum salmon from three distinct refugia in the North Pacific. We used restriction fragment counts as input to linear discriminant and neural network classification of independent test samples of salmon. Accuracies of 90–95, 81–86, and 72–80% were achieved when classifying fish as of either Japan/Russia/Yukon River versus southeastern Alaska/British Columbia origin, Japan versus Russia/Yukon River origin, or Russia versus Yukon River origin, respectively.