Scientists Identify New Penguin Species After More Than a Century

Scientists have identified a new species of penguin, the first such discovery in over a century. The bird, named the southeastern gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis kerguelensis), inhabits the subantarctic Kerguelen and Heard Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

The formal recognition of the southeastern gentoo as a distinct species followed an extensive study combining genomic, morphological, and ecological data, led by an international research team. The findings were published in April in the journal Communications Biology.

While visually identical to other gentoo penguins, which had long been grouped under a single species classification, the study has led to the reclassification of gentoo penguins into four separate species: the northern gentoo (P. papua), the southern gentoo (P. ellsworthi), the eastern gentoo (P. taeniata), and the newly identified southeastern gentoo (P. kerguelensis).

"There’s probably no species of penguin where the taxonomy has been more debated than the gentoo penguin," said Rauri Bowie, a curator and professor at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, in a statement. "For over 100 years it’s been controversial as to how many species or how many subspecies there are. What this paper does is try to address that question using cutting-edge integrative approaches."

Researchers suggest that the evolutionary divergence of these gentoo populations was influenced by their flexible diet. Gentoo penguins readily consume a variety of prey, including fish, krill, squid, and cuttlefish, leading them to remain in established nesting areas rather than migrating. This adherence to local resources, combined with geographical isolation and the Antarctic Polar Front, contributed to the development of distinct genetic and ecological traits over the last 300,000 to 500,000 years, ultimately resulting in the speciation of the southeastern gentoo penguin.