Lead colored dolphin

Lead colored dolphin
	Lead colored dolphin ( Sousa plumbea )
Systematics
Order :	Whales (cetacea)
Subordination :	Toothed whales (Odontoceti)
Superfamily :	Dolphin-like (Delphinoidea)
Family :	Dolphins (Delphinidae)
Genre :	Sousa
Type :	Lead colored dolphin
Scientific name
	Sousa plumbea
	( Cuvier , 1829)

The lead-colored dolphin ( Sousa plumbea ) is a species of dolphin belonging to the Sousa genus . The distribution area covers the west and north coast of the Indian Ocean , including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and extends on the eastern coast of India to about the mouths of Krishna and Godavari . Like other Sousa species, it only lives near the coast, also goes into the brackish water of mangroves and estuaries and migrates deep into rivers.

Distribution area

features

The lead-colored dolphin is a heavy, strong dolphin of typical shape and reaches a length of 2.8 m with a maximum weight of 280 kg. The jaws are long and form the characteristic, slender dolphin beak. The round melon is well developed. The flippers are wide and rounded at the end, the fin is low, somewhat sickle-shaped and less triangular than the Chinese white dolphin. It can also be absent in young animals and only develop with increasing age. The fluke is wide, notched in the middle and tapering to a point at the outer ends.

It differs from the Chinese white dolphin ( Sousa chinensis ), whose distribution area adjoins to the east, by its dark, slate, brown to lead-gray color (pink-whitish in the Chinese white dolphin) and a distinct back hump.

Systematics

The lead-colored dolphin is also often added to Sousa chinensis and then partially receives the status of a subspecies ( S. chinensis plumbea ). Wandrey and Rice give it the status of an independent species, which Martin Mendez and colleagues confirm after morphological and molecular genetic comparisons.

literature

Hadoram Shirihai : marine mammals. All 129 species worldwide. Illustrated by Brett Jarett. Franckh-Kosmos Verlags GmbH, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-440-11277-9 .
Rüdiger Wandrey: The whales and seals of the world. Occurrence, hazard, protection. Franckh-Kosmos Verlags GmbH, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-440-07047-6 .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Martin Mendez, Thomas J. Jefferson, Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, Michael Krützen, Guido J. Parra, Tim Collins, Giana Minton, Robert Baldwin, Per Berggren, Anna Särnblad, Omar A. Amir, Vic M. Peddemors, Leszek Karczmarski, Almeida Guissamulo, Brian Smith, Dipani Sutaria, George Amato, Howard C. Rosenbaum: Integrating multiple lines of evidence to better understand the evolutionary divergence of humpback dolphins along their entire distribution range: a new dolphin species in Australian waters? In: Molecular Ecology. Vol. 22, No. 23, 2013, pp. 5936-5948, DOI: 10.1111 / mec.12535 .
↑ Wandrey: The Whales and Seals of the World. 1997, p. 76.
^ Dale W. Rice: Marine Mammals of the World. Systematics and Distribution (= Society for Marine Mammalogy. Special Publication. 4). Allen Press, Lawrence KS 1998, ISBN 1-891276-03-4 .

Web links

Commons : Lead Colored Dolphin - Collection of images, videos and audio files

[Mendez_et_al.-1] Martin Mendez, Thomas J. Jefferson, Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, Michael Krützen, Guido J. Parra, Tim Collins, Giana Minton, Robert Baldwin, Per Berggren, Anna Särnblad, Omar A. Amir, Vic M. Peddemors, Leszek Karczmarski, Almeida Guissamulo, Brian Smith, Dipani Sutaria, George Amato, Howard C. Rosenbaum: Integrating multiple lines of evidence to better understand the evolutionary divergence of humpback dolphins along their entire distribution range: a new dolphin species in Australian waters? In: Molecular Ecology. Vol. 22, No. 23, 2013, pp. 5936-5948, DOI: 10.1111 / mec.12535 .

[2] Wandrey: The Whales and Seals of the World. 1997, p. 76.

[3] Dale W. Rice: Marine Mammals of the World. Systematics and Distribution (= Society for Marine Mammalogy. Special Publication. 4). Allen Press, Lawrence KS 1998, ISBN 1-891276-03-4 .