Marine Mammals

Arctic Marine Mammals

  There is a popular tendency to speak in rather nebulous terms about arctic marine mammals without defining the Arctic, the role and diversity of sea ice as a major component in high-latitude ecosvstems. or the diversity of marine mammals adapted to live in various ice-dominated habitats. There are. in fact, few truly arctic marine […]

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (marine mammals)

    I. Characters and Taxonomic Relationships The Atlantic spotted dolphin is not always spotted. A large heavy-bodied form found along the coast on both sides of the Atlantic (formerly called Stenella plagiodon along the U.S. coast) may be so heavily spotted as to appear white from a distance, but a smaller more gracile form […]

Atlantic White-Sided Dolphin (marine mammals)

  I. Distribution Inhabitants of the cold-temperate North Atlantic, Atlantic white-sided dolphins are usually encountered in waters over the continental shelf and slope, extending into deeper oceanic waters and occasionally into coastal areas (Fig. 1). The southern limit of this species in the western Atlantic is Cape Cod and the submarine canyons south of Georges […]

Australian Sea Lion (marine mammals)

  The indigenous Australian sea lion (Fig. 1) is one of the worlds rarest and most unusual seals: rare in terms of very small numbers and unusual in its having a sesqui-ennial reproductive cycle. It is also a temperate species, inhabiting waters around much of the southern part of the island continent between latitudes 28 […]

Baculum (marine mammals)

    The baculum (os penis) is a bone in the penis of Insec-tivora, Chiroptera, Primates, Rodentia. and Carnivora; it is absent from Cetacea and Sirenia. The corresponding element in females is the os clitoridis. In marine mammals the baculum and osclitoridis have been studied mainly in pinnipeds. The baculum develops in the proximal part […]

Baiji (marine mammals)

  The baiji, or Chinese river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), which inhabits the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China, is the rarest and most endangered cetacean in the world. Together with the vaquita in the eastern central Pacific, it is one of the two cetaceans classified as critically endangered in the 2000 […]

Baleen (marine mammals)

    The term baleen (also called whalebone) is a mass noun that refers collectively to the series of thin keratinous – plates (“baleen plates”) that make up the filtering apparatus in the mouth of a baleen whale. The word derives from the classical Latin Balaena and ultimately from the Greek (j>dAoiivoi [phallaina], “whale.” Baleen […]

Baleen Whales, Archaic (marine mammals)

  The modern mysticetes (baleen whales) are typically charge acterized by the development of specialized epithelial * tissue in the roof of the mouth that becomes keratinized: the so-called baleen. The baleen is used to filter organisms from water or sediment, ranging in size from microscopic cope-pods to crustaceans and fish as much as 5 […]

Baleen Whales (marine mammals)

  I. Diagnostic Characters and Taxonomy Baleen or whalebone whales (Mysticeti) comprise one of the two recent (nonfossil) cetacean suborders. They differ from the other suborder (toothed whales, Odonto-ceti), particularly in their lack of functional teeth. Instead they feed on relatively very small marine organisms by means of a highly specialized filter-feeding apparatus made up […]

Barnacles (marine mammals)

  Barnacle is the common name for over 900 marine species of the subclass Cirripedia. Barnacles are unique among crustaceans in being sessile; they attach to a variety of inanimate and animate objects. Barnacles live in polar regions of the world, as well as tropical and temperate waters. The principal superorder is Thoracica, which is […]

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