Friday 16 December 2016

Scientists studying dolphins find Bay of Bengal a realm of evolutionary change

Genetic research on Indo-Pacific bottlenose, humpback dolphins finds animals distinct from neighboring populations

Date: December 15, 2016
Source: Wildlife Conservation Society

Marine scientists have discovered that two species of dolphin in the waters off Bangladesh are genetically distinct from those in other regions of the Indian and western Pacific Oceans, a finding that supports a growing body of evidence that the Bay of Bengal harbors conditions that drive the evolution of new life forms, according to a new study by the American Museum of Natural History(AMNH), WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), and the cE3c -- Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (Universidade de Lisboa).

In the comparative study using DNA collected from both Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) and data from previous genetic studies, the authors of a newly published paper inConservation Genetics have found that both populations of both species are distinct from populations in other parts of the Indian Ocean and western Pacific. This discovery follows the recent description of a possible new species of "river shark" in the same waters.

The authors of the study titled "Oceanic drivers of population differentiation in Indo-Pacific bottlenose (Tursiops aduncus) and humpback (Sousa spp.) dolphins of the northern Bay of Bengal" are: Dr. Ana R. Amaral of cE3c, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal and AMNH's Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics; Brian D. Smith and Rubaiyat M. Mansur of WCS; and Dr. Howard C. Rosenbaum of WCS and affiliated with AMNH.

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