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      A New Dolphin Species, the Burrunan Dolphin Tursiops australis sp. nov., Endemic to Southern Australian Coastal Waters

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          Abstract

          Small coastal dolphins endemic to south-eastern Australia have variously been assigned to described species Tursiops truncatus, T. aduncus or T. maugeanus; however the specific affinities of these animals is controversial and have recently been questioned. Historically ‘the southern Australian Tursiops’ was identified as unique and was formally named Tursiops maugeanus but was later synonymised with T. truncatus. Morphologically, these coastal dolphins share some characters with both aforementioned recognised Tursiops species, but they also possess unique characters not found in either. Recent mtDNA and microsatellite genetic evidence indicates deep evolutionary divergence between this dolphin and the two currently recognised Tursiops species. However, in accordance with the recommendations of the Workshop on Cetacean Systematics, and the Unified Species Concept the use of molecular evidence alone is inadequate for describing new species. Here we describe the macro-morphological, colouration and cranial characters of these animals, assess the available and new genetic data, and conclude that multiple lines of evidence clearly indicate a new species of dolphin. We demonstrate that the syntype material of T. maugeanus comprises two different species, one of which is the historical ‘southern form of Tursiops’ most similar to T. truncatus, and the other is representative of the new species and requires formal classification. These dolphins are here described as Tursiops australis sp. nov., with the common name of ‘Burrunan Dolphin’ following Australian aboriginal narrative. The recognition of T. australis sp. nov. is particularly significant given the endemism of this new species to a small geographic region of southern and south-eastern Australia, where only two small resident populations in close proximity to a major urban and agricultural centre are known, giving them a high conservation value and making them susceptible to numerous anthropogenic threats.

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          Dating of the human-ape splitting by a molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA.

          A new statistical method for estimating divergence dates of species from DNA sequence data by a molecular clock approach is developed. This method takes into account effectively the information contained in a set of DNA sequence data. The molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was calibrated by setting the date of divergence between primates and ungulates at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 million years ago), when the extinction of dinosaurs occurred. A generalized least-squares method was applied in fitting a model to mtDNA sequence data, and the clock gave dates of 92.3 +/- 11.7, 13.3 +/- 1.5, 10.9 +/- 1.2, 3.7 +/- 0.6, and 2.7 +/- 0.6 million years ago (where the second of each pair of numbers is the standard deviation) for the separation of mouse, gibbon, orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee, respectively, from the line leading to humans. Although there is some uncertainty in the clock, this dating may pose a problem for the widely believed hypothesis that the pipedal creature Australopithecus afarensis, which lived some 3.7 million years ago at Laetoli in Tanzania and at Hadar in Ethiopia, was ancestral to man and evolved after the human-ape splitting. Another likelier possibility is that mtDNA was transferred through hybridization between a proto-human and a proto-chimpanzee after the former had developed bipedalism.
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            Preservation of avian blood and tissue samples for DNA analyses

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              Ancient DNA: do it right or not at all.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2011
                14 September 2011
                : 6
                : 9
                : e24047
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
                [2 ]Australian Centre for Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
                [3 ]Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
                [4 ]South Australian Museum, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
                [5 ]Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
                [6 ]Sciences Department, Museum Victoria, Carlton Gardens, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
                Smithsonian Institution National Zoological Park, United States of America
                Author notes

                Conceived and designed the experiments: KCR SWM. Performed the experiments: KCR JA LG KO. Analyzed the data: KCR. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SWM JA RT. Wrote the paper: KCR. Provided thorough review of manuscript: LG RT SWM JA KO.

                Article
                PONE-D-11-02223
                10.1371/journal.pone.0024047
                3173360
                21935372
                2840931d-1614-453d-a26e-6d289b786b84
                Charlton-Robb et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
                History
                : 27 January 2011
                : 4 August 2011
                Page count
                Pages: 17
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Evolutionary Biology
                Evolutionary Systematics
                Taxonomy
                Animal Taxonomy
                Genetics
                Animal Genetics
                Marine Biology
                Marine Conservation
                Zoology
                Animal Taxonomy

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                Uncategorized

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