The Southern Ocean is warming more rapidly than other parts of our planet. How this region's endemic biodiversity will respond to such changes can be illuminated by studying past events through genetic analyses of time-series data sets, including historic and fossil remains. Archaeological and subfossil remains show that the southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) was common along the coasts of Australia and New Zealand in the recent past. This species is now mostly confined to sub-Antarctic islands and the southern tip of South America. We analyzed ancient seal samples from Australia (Tasmania), New Zealand and the Antarctic mainland to examine how southern elephant seals have responded to a changing climate and anthropogenic pressures during the Holocene. Our analyses show that these seals formed part of a broader Australasian lineage, comprising seals from all sampled locations from the south Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. Our study demonstrates that southern elephant seal populations have dynamically altered both range and population sizes under climatic and human pressures over surprisingly short evolutionary timeframes for such a large, long-lived mammal.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 146. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 August 2026.
All research outputs
#352,107
of 34,188,479 outputs
Outputs from Global Change Biology
#323
of 7,787 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#4,563
of 359,716 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Global Change Biology
#2
of 154 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,188,479 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,787 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 33.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 359,716 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 154 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
