Dear All,
On behalf of my co-authors, I am pleased to share our recent paper published
first online in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. In this study we
describe a species of bottlenose dolphin for the coastal waters of the US
Atlantic Ocean based on an integrative taxonomic approach. We resurrected the
name Tursiops erebennus and suggested the common name Tamanend’s bottlenose
dolphin for this coastal bottlenose dolphin species:
Costa APB, McFee W, Wilcox LA, Archer FI, Rosel PE. 2022. The common bottlenose
dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) ecotypes of the western North Atlantic revisited:
an integrative taxonomic investigation supports the presence of distinct
species. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac025
<https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac025>
Abstract
Integrative taxonomy can help us to gain a better understanding of the degree
of evolutionary divergence between taxa. In the western North Atlantic (wNA),
two ecotypes (coastal and offshore) of common bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops
truncatus, exhibit some external morphological differences, and previous
genetic findings suggested that they could be different species. However, their
taxonomy remains unsettled. Using an integrative approach comparing traditional
and geometric morphometrics, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, we evaluated
evolutionary relationships between these ecotypes. We observed congruence among
these lines of evidence, strongly indicating that the wNA ecotypes are
following distinct evolutionary trajectories. Based on mitochondrial DNA
analyses, we detected significant divergence (Nei’s dA = 0.027), unshared
haplotypes and one fixed difference leading to complete diagnosability
(percentage diagnosable = 100%) of the wNA coastal ecotype. We found
morphological diagnosability and negligible nuclear gene flow between the wNA
ecotypes. Integration of these multiple lines of evidence revealed that the wNA
coastal ecotype is an independent evolutionary unit, appearing to be more
closely related to coastal dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
than to their parapatric offshore neighbours, while the offshore dolphins form
a relatively cohesive worldwide unit, T. truncatus. We propose that this
coastal ecotype is recognized as a distinct species, resurrecting the name
Tursiops erebennus.
You can also contact me directly for a PDF copy (anapbcco...@gmail.com
<mailto:anapbcco...@gmail.com>)
Best,
Ana
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