Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin
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Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin ( Tursiops aduncus ) |
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| Tursiops aduncus | ||||||||||||
| ( Ehrenberg , 1833) |
The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops aduncus ) is a species of dolphin that is very similar to the bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus ) , found in the Indo-Pacific from the southern coast of South Africa and the coast of East Africa and along the entire north coast of the Indian Ocean to the tropical western Pacific to southern Japan, northern Australia and Melanesia occurs. One of the largest populations of this species is found in Shark Bay in Western Australia.
features
The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin is a maximum of 2.60 meters long and weighs 230 kg, making it smaller than the bottlenose dolphin. Males are on average slightly larger than females. The body is slimmer, the head smaller, the snout longer and thinner than the bottlenose dolphin. The melon is less developed and the head is less convex. The fin (dorsal fin) sits above the middle of the body, is sickle-shaped and proportionally higher than the bottlenose dolphin, whereas the flippers (pectoral fin) are proportionally larger every now and then. The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin has more teeth than the bottlenose dolphin.
Its color is generally gray to light brown and sometimes with a contrasting darker top. The underside is whitish. In a minority of the animals, a point mark develops on the ventral side with increasing age. Eye stripes and other marks on the head and shoulder stripes are less clear than in the bottlenose dolphin.
Way of life
The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin lives near the coast and gregariously, usually in schools of 5 to 15 animals, but in some cases also in very large societies of up to 1000 animals. In some regions it often socializes with specimens of the bottlenose dolphin and dolphins of the genus Sousa . It jumps less often than the bottlenose dolphin, is less playful and shy of boats. Like the bottlenose dolphin, it feeds on fish and cephalopods .
Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins mate and give birth in late spring and summer, and year-round in some areas. The gestation period is 12 months. The newborns are 84 to 110 cm long and weigh 9 to 21 kg. Young animals are more uniform and darker in color than the adults.
Systematics
The first description was made in 1833 by the German zoologist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg . For a long time the species was considered a subspecies of the bottlenose dolphin ( T. truncatus ). Due to significant genetic differences, the larger number of teeth and other differences, the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin has been recognized as an independent species since the late 1990s (Rice 1998, Wang et al. 1999, 2000a, b). Possibly Tursiops aduncus is more closely related to the spotted dolphins ( Stenella ) than to the bottlenose dolphin.
See also
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 .
Web links
- Tursiops aduncus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Hammond, PS, Bearzi, G., Bjørge, A., Forney, KA, Karkzmarski, L., Kasuya, T., Perrin, WF, Scott, MD, Wang, JY, Wells, RS & Wilson, B ., 2008. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Oliver Manlik, Jane A. McDonald, Janet Mann, Holly C. Raudino, Lars Bejder: The relative importance of reproduction and survival for the conservation of two dolphin populations . In: Ecology and Evolution . April 1, 2016, ISSN 2045-7758 , p. n / a – n / a , doi : 10.1002 / ece3.2130 ( wiley.com [accessed May 6, 2016]).