Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Carnivora > Phocidae > Pusa > Pusa sibirica

Pusa sibirica (Baikal Seal)

Synonyms: Phoca baicalensis; Phoca sibirica; Phoca vitulina sibirica; Pusa hispida sibirica; Pusa siberica

Wikipedia Abstract

The Baikal seal, Lake Baikal seal or nerpa (Pusa sibirica), is a species of earless seal endemic to Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. Like the Caspian seal, it is related to the Arctic ringed seal. The Baikal seal is one of the smallest true seals and the only exclusively freshwater pinniped species. A subpopulation of inland harbour seals living in the Hudson's Bay region of Quebec, Canada (lac de loups marins harbour seals), the Saimaa ringed seal (a ringed seal subspecies) and the Ladoga seal (a ringed seal subspecies) are found in fresh water, but these are part of species that also have marine populations. It remains a scientific mystery how the seals originally came to Lake Baikal, hundreds of kilometers from any ocean.
View Wikipedia Record: Pusa sibirica

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
19
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 6.21
EDGE Score: 1.98
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Gestation [2]  9 months 3 days
Litter Size [2]  1
Litters / Year [2]  1
Maximum Longevity [2]  56 years
Migration [1]  Intraoceanic
Snout to Vent Length [4]  4.428 feet (135 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds
Weaning [2]  68 days
Adult Weight [2]  198.417 lbs (90.00 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  6.614 lbs (3.00 kg)
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [3]  80 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  20 %
Forages - Marine [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  5 years 10 months
Male Maturity [2]  7 years

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Barguzinskiy Biosphere Reserve Zapovednik Ia 924970 Buryatia, Russia

Prey / Diet

Comephorus baikalensis (greater oilfish)[5]
Comephorus dybowskii (lesser oilfish)[5]
Cottocomephorus grewingkii (Yellowwing)[5]
Cottocomephorus inermis (Longfin Baikal sculpin)[5]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

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
♦ 2de 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
♦ 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
♦ 4Nathan 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
♦ 5Phoca sibirica, Jeanette Thomas, Vladamir Pastukhov, Robert Elsner, and Eugene Petrov, Mammalian Species No. 188, pp. 1-6 (1982)
♦ 6Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 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.
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