A new species of baleen whale has been discovered. The stunning find, made after researchers studied the body shape and genetics of a few leviathan skeletons gathering dust for the last 25 years in a Japanese museum, brings the total number of known species in the main genus of baleen whale to eight.
Coming just a day after the World Conservation Union released its latest list of the world鈥檚 endangered species, it also reinforces just how little scientists still know about much of the world鈥檚 fauna, including its greatest mammals.
Marine biologists had puzzled over the identity of the new whale species since eight specimens were caught by Japanese research whalers in the 1970s. Another was found in 1998. But the mystery now appears to be solved, by researchers led by Shiro Wada at the Japanese National Research Institute of Fisheries Science in Yokohama.
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鈥淥bviously we need to save the whales in general,鈥� says Michael Novacek, an expert in mammalian evolution at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 鈥淏ut our knowledge of which populations are unique and most threatened can only be sustained if we know what those entities are.鈥�
However, botanist Bruce Stein, of US conservation body NatureServe, warns that in general subdividing species too finely could dilute conservation efforts. 鈥淲e want try to protect the full array of diversity,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut we don鈥檛 want to have things so finely split that it is diverting our attention from those things that are very distinctive.鈥�
Comb-like plates
The new whales species differs from known fin and sei whales in the shape of their skull and in the comb-like baleen plates they use to filter food from the water, reports Wada鈥檚 team.
The whales鈥� mitochondrial DNA differs in consistent ways from that of related species, confirming that they belong in a separate, new species called Balaenoptera omurai.
The DNA evidence also backs taxonomists who have argued that another related species, Eden鈥檚 whale, is really two separate species, Eden鈥檚 whale, B. edeni, and Bryde鈥檚 whale, B. brydei. So at a stroke, Wada鈥檚 team boosted the number of Balaenoptera species from six to eight.
Similar events have occurred before. Toothed whale species have been redefined several times in the past few decades, and researchers now suspect there may be as many as seven species of orca, or killer whale, and possibly even more species of bottlenose dolphins.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 426, p 278)