It is now official, a recently published paper in the journal Polar Biology, confirms what many of us have long suspected, there is more than one species of Rockhopper penguin out there!
For many years debates have raged with many an ornithologist having his feathers ruffled on the topic to split or not to split. The recent paper, by Banks et al. compared the genetic distances between the three Rockhopper subspecies and compared them with such sister species as Macaroni penguins. The results left Banks and his colleagues in no doubt, the three putative Rockhopper subspecies, currently living far apart in different areas of the Southern oceans, should be split into the following three species;
Rockhopper Penguin, Eudyptes chrysocome
Northern Rockhopper, Eudyptes moseleyi
Eastern Rockhopper, Eudyptes filhoi
This change in penguin taxonomy will now increase the number of penguin species from 17 to 19. For all of you that have traveled to Antarctica you will have seen Rockhopper Penguin as this is the species that is now restricted, as a breeding species, to islands off South America and the Falkland Islands. For those of you lucky enough to have traveled with Zegrahm on our historical Steppingstones of the Atlantic voyage, several years ago, you will now be able to check off Northern Rockhopper Penguin, as this was the species that we all saw so wonderfully well on Inaccessible Island. This species is now restricted to the islands of Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, and St. Paul and Amsterdam Islands in the Indian Ocean. Finally we have the Eastern Rockhopper Penguin which is restricted as a breeding species to Crozet, Kerguelan, Heard, Macquarie, Auckland, Campbell, Bounty, Antipodes, Marion, and Prince Edward Islands. Read more
