An international team of biologists has formally named the first new penguin species in more than 100 years: Pygoscelis kerguelensis, the southeastern gentoo penguin, found only on the Kerguelen Islands, a wind-scoured French archipelago roughly 2,000 miles from the nearest inhabited land in the southern Indian Ocean.
The discovery, published by researchers from UC Berkeley, the University of Chile and Andrés Bello National University, came from whole-genome sequencing of 64 penguins across 10 breeding colonies spanning nearly the entire range of what scientists long lumped together as one species. The data showed gentoo penguins actually split into four distinct lineages: a northern species around the Falklands, an eastern species on Crozet and Marion, the newly named southeastern species on Kerguelen, and a southern species on the Antarctic Peninsula.
"There's probably no species of penguin where the taxonomy has been more debated than the gentoo penguin," said Rauri Bowie, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and senior author on the study. "For over 100 years it's been controversial as to how many species or how many subspecies there are." Whole-genome sequencing, he said, finally settled the question while also revealing how the birds adapted to wildly different sub-Antarctic environments.
The finding is bittersweet. Three of the four species, including the newly described Kerguelen population, are already considered threatened, according to a companion report on the research. Co-author Juliana Vianna of Andrés Bello National University said island-bound populations have nowhere to retreat to as oceans warm.
"Island species that have really low population sizes could be compared with the sub-Antarctic gentoo penguins. Because they're endemic to these islands, they will find no place to go after a change in their environment."
— Juliana Vianna, Andrés Bello National University
Researchers project that under moderate climate scenarios, several island colonies could become uninhabitable by 2050, with few or no nearby islands suitable as refuges. Conservation officials in France, Chile and other nations with jurisdiction over the affected islands are now being urged to reassess protection status for the newly split species individually rather than as one broad, seemingly stable population.
