Molecular methods of DNA analysis will be employed to examine the genetic relatedness among populations of several marine species that have global distributions. Special attention will be devoted to marine turtles, where longstanding questions exist concerning the historical times of rookery colonization, whether females return to their natal sites to nest, and the degree of genetic contact among rookeries involving both males and females. This molecular appraisal of the life history of marine turtles will offer evidence on the degree of demographic independence among turtle colonies that should be critical in the development of populaton management strategies for these endangered species. Similar molecular genetic assays will also be conducted on globally-distributed oceanic birds, which may prove to exhibit life history and migrational patterns somewhat analogous to those of the marine turtles. Assays of DNA from both the nuclear and mitochondrial genes in these and other marine species will provide knowledge of migratory patterns in organisms that are difficult to observe directly. The data will also contribute to development of a history in which the degree of concordance among the genealogies of independent genes is proposed as an indicator of the historical magnitudes of population separations.
