Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720;
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Republic of Panama.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Apr 9;116(15):7377-7381. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1808759116. Epub 2019 Mar 25.
Migration is an integral feature of modern mysticete whale ecology, and the demands of migration may have played a key role in shaping mysticete evolutionary history. Constraining when migration became established and assessing how it has changed through time may yield valuable insight into the evolution of mysticete whales and the oceans in which they lived. However, there are currently few data which directly assess prehistoric mysticete migrations. Here we show that calcite δO profiles of two species of modern whale barnacles (coronulids) accurately reflect the known migration routes of their host whales. We then analyze well-preserved fossil coronulids from three different locations along the eastern Pacific coast, finding that δO profiles from these fossils exhibit trends and ranges similar to modern specimens. Our results demonstrate that migration is an ancient behavior within the humpback and gray whale lineages and that multiple Pleistocene populations were undertaking migrations of an extent similar to those of the present day.
迁移是现代须鲸类鲸鱼生态学的一个组成部分，迁移的需求可能在塑造须鲸进化历史方面发挥了关键作用。限制迁移何时确立，并评估其随时间的变化，可能会为研究须鲸类鲸鱼和它们生活的海洋的进化提供有价值的见解。然而，目前很少有数据可以直接评估史前须鲸类的迁移。在这里，我们表明，两种现代鲸虱（ Coronulids ）的方解石 δO 谱准确地反映了其宿主鲸鱼的已知迁移路线。然后，我们分析了东太平洋沿岸三个不同地点保存完好的化石鲸虱，发现这些化石的 δO 谱与现代标本表现出相似的趋势和范围。我们的研究结果表明，迁移是座头鲸和灰鲸谱系中的一种古老行为，而且多个更新世种群正在进行类似于现今的迁移。
