Two types of Berardius are recognised by local whalers in Hokkaido, Japan. The first is the ordinary Baird's beaked whale, B. bairdii, whereas the other is much smaller and entirely black. Previous molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that the black type is one recognisable taxonomic unit within the Berardius clade but is distinct from the two known Berardius species. To determine the characteristics of the black type, we summarised external morphology and skull osteometric data obtained from four individuals, which included three individuals from Hokkaido and one additional individual from the United States National Museum of Natural History collection. The whales differed from all of their congeners by having the following unique characters: a substantially smaller body size of physically mature individuals, proportionately shorter beak, and darker body colour. Thus, we conclude that the whales are a third Berardius species.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46703-w | DOI Listing |
Sci Rep
January 2025
Office of Protected Resources, NOAA Fisheries, Silver Spring, MD, 20910, USA.
Vessel strikes are a critical threat to endangered North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis), significantly contributing to their elevated mortality. Accurate estimates of these mortality rates are essential for developing effective management strategies to aid in the species' recovery. This study enhances existing vessel strike models by incorporating detailed regional data on vessel traffic characteristics as well as whale distribution and behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
January 2025
Vocational Training Center, FoShan Open University, FoShan, Guangdong Province, China.
Data classification is an important research direction in machine learning. In order to effectively handle extensive datasets, researchers have introduced diverse classification algorithms. Notably, Kernel Extreme Learning Machine (KELM), as a fast and effective classification method, has received widespread attention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBehav Processes
December 2024
SeaWorld California, San Diego, CA, USA; SeaWorld Parks, Orlando, FL, USA.
Activity budget investigations are necessary to understand how individuals within a group manage their daily activities, thus providing insights into the social dynamics of a species. Our objective was to explore and describe the behavioral activities within a group of managed care killer whales. From 261 hours of coded surface video collected from April 2022 to January 2023, we scan-sampled day-time hours to examine eight behavioral categories exhibited by 8-9 killer whales bimonthly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiomimetics (Basel)
December 2024
Institute of Knowledge Technology, University Complutense of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for effective surface disinfection solutions, which has led to the use of mobile robots equipped with ultraviolet (UVC) lamps as a promising technology. This study aims to optimize the navigation of differential mobile robots equipped with UVC lamps to ensure maximum efficiency in disinfecting complex environments. Bio-inspired metaheuristic algorithms such as the gazelle optimization algorithm, whale optimization algorithm, bat optimization algorithm, and particle swarm optimization are applied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiomimetics (Basel)
November 2024
School of Computer Science and Information Security, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541000, China.
Beluga whale optimization (BWO) is a swarm-based metaheuristic algorithm inspired by the group behavior of beluga whales. BWO suffers from drawbacks such as an insufficient exploration capability and the tendency to fall into local optima. To address these shortcomings, this paper proposes augmented multi-strategy beluga optimization (AMBWO).
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