DNA surprise: Gentoo penguins may be four species in disguise

Ten years ago, Dr Jane Younger noticed something odd while analysing penguin DNA for her PhD. Genetic data for emperor, king, chinstrap, and Adelie penguins showed no major variations, even across populations thousands of kilometres apart.

But gentoo penguins were different. “Gentoos just had so much difference in their genomes between these different islands that it was orders of magnitude more different than what you would see in another species,” said Dr Younger.

A decade later, Dr Younger has co-authored a paper in Nature’s Communications Biology journal. “The main finding is gentoo penguins are not one species — they’re actually four,” said the vertebrate ecologist from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at UTAS.

Gentoo penguins can be distinguished by their bright red-orange bills and conspicuous white eye patches.