Japanese Scientists Identify New Species of Whale

• Main Authors: Yuko Hashimoto, Ph. D, Michael D. O'neill
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Balaenoptera musculus; baleen whale; baleen whales; Blue whale
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.424.915; http://www.babec.org/files/resources/articles/BioBeat_whale.pdf

New analyses of the remains of eight whales caught almost 30 years ago, together with analyses of remains of a ninth whale killed accidentally in 1998, have led Japanese scientists to the conclusion that these nine whales constitute members of an entirely new species of living whale. This is the first new species of large, filter-feeding (baleen) whale that has been described in 90 years. The research effort, which included analysis of whale mitochondrial DNA carried out using Applied Biosystems technology, also revealed that two other particular types of whales previously thought to belong to the same species, are, in fact, separate species. Together, these results increase from six to eight the number of known species of Balaenoptera whales, a genus of filter-feeding (baleen) whales that includes the largest mammal on earth, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). In addition to having important implications for taxonomy and evolution studies, these findings may also be relevant to commercial whaling regulatory efforts that depend in part on statistics as to the populations of different species of whales. The work supporting the new species classifications was described in Nature (1) and was conducted by Japanese scientists Dr. Shiro Wada (Chief, Cell Biology Section