{"id":53800,"date":"2026-11-09T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=53800"},"modified":"2026-11-02T12:54:59","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T17:54:59","slug":"gentoo-penguins-were-long-treated-as-a-single-species-and-genomes-have-now-split-them-into-four-including-a-look-alike-on-remote-indian-ocean-islands-that-had-never-been-formally-named","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/gentoo-penguins-were-long-treated-as-a-single-species-and-genomes-have-now-split-them-into-four-including-a-look-alike-on-remote-indian-ocean-islands-that-had-never-been-formally-named\/53800\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentoo penguins were long treated as a single species, and genomes have now split them into four, including a look-alike on remote Indian Ocean islands that had never been formally named"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gentoo penguins, long treated as one species, are in fact four, according to a study published in Communications Biology<\/a> on April 23, 2026. One of them, the southeastern gentoo penguin, is new to science. It lives on the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first author is Daly Noll, a graduate student at the University of Chile. The senior authors are Juliana Vianna of Andr\u00e9s Bello National University, Rauri Bowie of UC Berkeley and Elie Poulin of the University of Chile. Their team also modeled where each species could live in 2050, with bleak results for three of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A skin collected in 1897<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to UC Berkeley’s announcement<\/a>, Kerguelen lies nearly 2,000 miles from any permanently inhabited landmass. The French also call it the Desolation Islands. Its gentoos have the usual white belly, black back and white band across the crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gentoo
An adult gentoo penguin with chicks in a colony on the Kerguelen Islands, November 2020. (Photo: Antoine Lamielle \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Apart from slight differences in size and voice, the university says, they look like every other gentoo. Biologists call this a cryptic species, one that is genetically distinct but hard to tell apart by eye. The same happened with two tiny snails described in Montenegro<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new species, Pygoscelis kerguelensis, has an adult male as its reference specimen, or holotype. Robert Hall collected it on December 31, 1897. That bird is kept as a flat skin at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s probably no species of penguin where the taxonomy has been more debated than the gentoo penguin,” said Bowie, a professor of integrative biology at Berkeley. Before this paper, several of its authors had described as many as six subspecies, without agreeing on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

64 genomes from 10 colonies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The new consensus rests on whole genome sequences from 64 penguins in 10 breeding colonies. According to the university, it is the first data set to cover nearly the entire range. The team also compared coloration, calls, breeding dates, diet and feeding behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Antarctica’s gentoos turned out to have extra genes for making body heat and storing fat. Others help them sense light, which the Berkeley team links to seasonal swings in daylight and light bouncing off the ice. Crozet and Macquarie birds lean on oxygen and diving genes, and South American ones on digestion and heart genes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2020 study<\/a> had already argued for four gentoo species, and it gave the South Georgia birds their own name, Pygoscelis poncetii. This time those birds land inside the southern gentoo, while Kerguelen gets the new name. Speaking of the long argument over how many gentoo species exist, Bowie said, “What this paper does is try to address that question using cutting-edge integrative approaches.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four names across the Polar Front<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Where each species lives depends on the Antarctic Polar Front, a band of ocean where the water changes temperature and saltiness. It also acts as a barrier to animal movement, according to the Berkeley team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North of the front lives the eastern gentoo, Pygoscelis taeniata, on the Crozet, Marion and Macquarie islands. The northern gentoo, Pygoscelis papua, is now restricted to the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands and Martillo Island in South America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right on the front sits the southeastern gentoo, on Kerguelen and probably nearby Heard Island, where satellite tags have tracked its young. South of it, the southern gentoo, Pygoscelis ellsworthi, occupies the Antarctic Peninsula, coastal Antarctica and South Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the study, the southern gentoo accounts for about 65 percent of all gentoos. The northern species holds 24 percent, the southeastern 9 percent and the eastern just 2 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fish, krill, squid and cuttlefish<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gentoos eat almost anything they can catch in the water, and the researchers argue that this habit helped split them apart. Local food is enough, so the birds stay near their colony and nest in the same place every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gentoo
Gentoo penguins leap from the water as they swim, a technique known as porpoising. (Photo: Keith Barnes \/ UC Berkeley)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stay home long enough on an isolated island and you end up adapted to its waters. By the authors’ estimate, that took 300,000 to 500,000 years, while the Polar Front kept the groups apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With krill becoming scarcer around Antarctica<\/a>, that flexible menu now pays off. Specialists such as Ad\u00e9lie and emperor penguins<\/a> are declining, while Antarctic Peninsula gentoos are increasing. Global gentoo numbers have grown about 11 percent since 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macquarie lost half its pairs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Macquarie Island, eastern gentoo breeding pairs fell by 50 percent over the last three generations, the paper reports. A monitored colony on Possession Island, in the Crozet archipelago, shrank by 32.6 percent between 1992 and 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team’s habitat models look grim for three species as warming water reshapes ocean habitats<\/a>. Under a moderate emissions scenario, the northern, eastern and southeastern gentoos lose habitat across much of their ranges by 2050. The southeastern gentoo may keep some habitat around Heard Island, and the southern gentoo’s range could grow about 9 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, the IUCN lists gentoos as one widespread species of “Least Concern,” a status driven largely by the southern birds. The authors want each lineage assessed separately, as happened with the Himalayan viper that turned out to be five species<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several countries govern the sub-Antarctic islands, among them France, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. “It’s very important that conservation institutions in all the different countries involved recognize and take appropriate action to save these three gentoo penguin species,” Vianna said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerguelen’s last count was 1985<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Those 2050 maps rely on four ocean variables: temperature, salinity, pH and productivity. They ignore prey switching, dispersal and changes in behavior. The authors write that the results “should not be interpreted as definitive forecasts of extinction,” and adding seafloor depth gave a brighter outlook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of the head counts behind those trends are decades old. The last censuses date from 1981 on Crozet, 1985 on Kerguelen, 1987 on Heard and South Georgia, and 2010 in the Falklands. No genetic samples came from Heard Island itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vianna is already searching the genomes for changes linked to surviving avian influenza. “Whole genome sequencing has transformed our ability to not only look at adaptation from a perspective of how things diversify, but it has really important conservation value,” Bowie said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full study was published in Communications Biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Antoine Lamielle \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gentoo penguins, long treated as one species, are in fact four, according to a study published in Communications Biology on … <\/p>\n

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