Burrunan Dolphin
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Burrunan dolphin ( Tursiops australis ) |
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| Tursiops australis | ||||||||||||
| Charlton-Robb et al., 2011 |
The Burrunan dolphin ( Tursiops australis ) is a bottlenose dolphin species endemic to the coastal waters of southeastern Australia, off Victoria , Tasmania, and southern New South Wales . The species was not described until 2011 after it was delineated from the bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus ) and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops aduncus ) by comparing mitochondrial DNA , microsatellites , external morphology, coloration, and some skull features . It received its common name "Burrunan dolphin" after a local Aboriginal name for dolphins. Two non-migratory populations are known, around 90 animals live in the large Port Phillip Bay, on which the metropolis Melbourne is also located, and another 50 specimens can be found in the Gippsland Lakes .
features
The Burrunan dolphin is smaller than the bottlenose dolphin but larger than the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin and reaches a body length of 2.27 to 2.78 meters. Its rostrum (the "snout") is small (9.4–12 cm) and stocky, the dorsal fin is sickle-shaped, similar to the bottlenose dolphin. On the top and sides of the head and torso, the Burrunan dolphin is dark blue-gray, light gray along the side centerline, on the shoulder and below the dorsal fin, and whitish on the abdomen, around the eyes and above the flippers .
Its 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 between 47 and 51.3 cm. The jaws have an average of 94 teeth, 46 teeth in the lower jaw and 48 in the upper jaw. The teeth are long and conical.
Systematics
The Burrunan dolphin is temporarily placed in the genus Tursiops , which becomes polyphyletic . The examined sections of the mitochondrial genome differ by 5.5 and 9.1 percent from that of the two other Tursiops species, which is more than in other dolphin species that are placed in the same genus. Sister species is said to be the East Pacific dolphin ( Stenella longirostris ). The authors of the first description believe that the species will be placed in a genus of its own in a future revision of the dolphin family and are already proposing Tursiodelphis as the genus name.
source
- Kate Charlton-Robb, Lisa-ann Gershwin, Ross Thompson, Jeremy Austin, Kylie Owen & Stephen McKechnie: A New Dolphin Species, the Burrunan Dolphin Tursiops australis sp. nov., Endemic to Southern Australian Coastal Waters. In: PLoS ONE 6 (9), 2011, e24047. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0024047
