Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Cetacea > Hyperoodontidae > Mesoplodon > Mesoplodon europaeus

Mesoplodon europaeus (Gervais's Beaked Whale; Gervais' Beaked Whale)

Synonyms: Dioplodon europaeus; Dioplodon gervaisi; Mesoplodon gervaisi; Neoziphius europaeus; Nodus europaeus

Wikipedia Abstract

Gervais' beaked whale (Mesoplodon europaeus), sometimes known as the Antillian beaked whale, Gulf Stream beaked whale, or European beaked whale (from which its scientific name is derived) is the most frequently stranding type of mesoplodont whale off the coast of North America. It has also stranded off South America and Africa.
View Wikipedia Record: Mesoplodon europaeus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
6
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Not determined do to incomplete vulnerability data.
ED Score: 12.81

Attributes

Maximum Longevity [4]  48 years
Snout to Vent Length [2]  22 feet (671 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Pelagic
Adult Weight [2]  1.123 tons (1,019.00 kg)
Female Weight [2]  1.202 tons (1,090.00 kg)
Male Weight [2]  1.045 tons (948.00 kg)
Weight Dimorphism [2]  15 %
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [3]  20 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  80 %
Forages - Marine [3]  100 %

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Everglades and Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve   Florida, United States  
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary IV 2387149 Florida, United States

Prey / Diet

Chauliodus sloani (Dannevig's dragonfish)[5]
Neognathophausia ingens[5]
Taonius pavo[6]

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Orcinus orca (Killer Whale)[7]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Phyllobothrium delphini[8]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
5Niche Partitioning, Distribution And Competition In North Atlantic Beaked Whales, Colin D. MacLeod, A thesis submitted to the School of Biological Sciences for a degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. January 2005
6Insights into the diet of beaked whales from the atypical mass stranding in the Canary Islands in September 2002, M.B. Santos, V. Martin, M. Arbelo, A. Fernández and G.J. Pierce, J. Mar. Biol. Ass. U.K. (2007), 87, 243–251
7Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
8Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0