Burrunan dolphin

Burrunan dolphin (Tursiops australis)

The Burrunan dolphin (Tursiops australis ) is a Tümmlerart, which is endemic in the coastal waters of south-eastern Australia before Victoria, Tasmania and southern New South Wales. The species was described only in 2011, after she was delineated by comparing mitochondrial DNA, microsatellites, external morphology, staining and some skull features of the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus ) and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus ). It received its common name " Burrunan Dolphin " after a local Aboriginebezeichnung for dolphins. There are known two non-migratory populations, about 90 animals live in the great Port Phillip Bay, which was also the metropolis of Melbourne is another 50 copies will stay in the Gippsland Lakes.

Features

The Burrunan dolphin is smaller than the bottlenose dolphins but larger than the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and reaches a body length of 2.27 to 2.78 meters. Its rostrum (the " snout" ) is small ( 9.4 to 12 cm) and stocky, the dorsal fin falcate similar to bottlenose dolphins. On the top and sides of the head and trunk of the Burrunan dolphin is dark blue-gray, light gray along the side of the center line, at the shoulder and below the dorsal fin and whitish on the abdomen, around the eyes and above the flipper.

His head is more delicate than that of the bottlenose dolphin and wider and shorter than that of the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin. It reaches lengths of 47 to 51.3 cm. The jaws are set with an average of 94 teeth, 46 teeth in the lower jaw and 48 in the maxilla. The teeth are long and conical.

System

The Burrunan dolphin is provisionally placed in the genus Tursiops, but is polyphyletic with it. The studied sections of the mitochondrial genome differ by 5.5 and 9.1 per cent from that of the other two Tursiops species, which is more than other dolphin species that are placed in the same genus. Sister species should be the East Pacific dolphin ( Stenella longirostris ). The authors of the first description believe that the species is provided in a future revision of the dolphin family in its own genus and beat already Tursiodelphis as a generic name before.

Source

• Charlton - Robb K, Gershwin L, Thompson R, Austin J, Owen K, including: A New Dolphin Species, the Dolphin Tursiops australis sp Burrunan. nov., Endemic to Southern Australian Coastal Waters. In: PLoS ONE 6 (9 ), 2011, e24047. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024047