Tamanend’s Bottlenose Dolphin

Tamanend's bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops erebennus) is a species of bottlenose dolphin that inhabits coastal waters in the eastern United States. This species was previously considered a nearshore variant of the common bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus. == Taxonomy == Tursiops erebennus was first described by Edward Drinker Cope as Delphinus erebennus in 1865. The type specimen was collected from a fisherman's seine net at the Red Bank community in West Deptford Township, New Jersey. Cope identified various physical differences between T. erebennus and T. truncatus (then known as Delphinus tursio), including a smaller size, fewer vertebrae, and fewer ribs in T. erebennus. However, T. erebennus was subsequently synonymized with T. truncatus. Future studies and stock assessments instead recognized dolphins in the region as belonging to two T. truncatus ecotypes: a nearshore coastal type and an offshore type. Genetic analyses suggested that the nearshore ecotype was genetically distinct. Costa et al. (2022) compared the morphology, mitochondrial DNA, and nuclear DNA of the nearshore and offshore T. truncatus ecotypes in the western North Atlantic. They found considerable differences and evolutionary divergence, and suggested that the offshore ecotype be retained within T. truncatus while T. erebennus was resurrected as the scientific name for the…