This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: Financial support for fieldwork and laboratory analyses was provided by grants CNPq-483408/2009-53/2012-6, CNPq/CT Amazônia-575603/2008-9 and CNPq/FAPEAM SISBIOTA-563348/2010-0 to IPF, and the Scott Neotropical Fund and the Society for Marine Mammalogy to WG. Received: SeptemAccepted: OctoPublished: January 22, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Hrbek et al. Turvey, Zoological Society of London, United Kingdom We anticipate that this study will provide an impetus for the taxonomic and conservation reanalysis of other taxa shared between the Araguaia and Amazon aquatic ecosystems, as well as stimulate historical biogeographical analyses of the two basins.Ĭitation: Hrbek T, da Silva VMF, Dutra N, Gravena W, Martin AR, Farias IP (2014) A New Species of River Dolphin from Brazil or: How Little Do We Know Our Biodiversity. This discovery highlights the immensity of the deficit in our knowledge of Neotropical biodiversity, as well as vulnerability of biodiversity to anthropogenic actions in an increasingly threatened landscape. The estimated time of divergence corresponds to the separation of the Araguaia-Tocantins basin from the Amazon basin.
The species is diagnosable by a series of molecular and morphological characters and diverged from its Amazonian sister taxon 2.08 million years ago. We report the discovery of a new species of a river dolphin from the Araguaia River basin of Brazil, the first such discovery in nearly 100 years.
They comprise relict evolutionary lineages of high taxonomic distinctness and conservation value, but are afforded little protection. True river dolphins are some of the rarest and most endangered of all vertebrates.