No abstract

Beaked whales of the Family Ziphiidae are the least known of all cetacean families. Here, using mitochondrial DNA Control Region and Cytochrome B, and supported by morphological comparisons of skull and teeth, we identified a 4.6 m female beaked whale, stranded in Maco, Compostela Valley, Philippines on December 19 2012, as the Deranayigala's beaked whale, Mesoplodon hotaula. This is the first record of M. hotaula in the Philippines and only the eighth specimen in the world.

The Philippine archipelago harbours a remarkable diversity of harvestmen, with respect to both taxonomy and complexity of biogeographic origins. Among the armoured harvestmen (suborder Laniatores), six families of distantly related groups occur in this archipelago. Here, we describe a new species of the family Tithaeidae, Tithaeus odysseus sp. nov., discovered during a collecting campaign on the island of Mindanao. The description of this species expands the known distribution of the family and demonstrates another exception to the zoogeographic boundary known as Huxley’s Line which putatively separates the biota of the Philippines (excluding the Palawan island group) from the Sunda Shelf biota. Given the coincident distributions of Tithaeidae and the mite harvestman family Stylocellidae (Cyphophthalmi), a group renowned for its poor dispersal ability, we inferred phylogenetic relationships and divergence times of the Philippines lineages of both families by using a comprehensive molecular dating analysis of all Opiliones. The internal phylogeny of Tithaeidae mirrored the biogeography of Philippine Stylocellidae, showing a close affinity between the Philippine and Bornean species. Molecular dating showed contemporaneous colonisation of Mindanao by both families in the Cretaceous. We infer these patterns to reflect faunal connections between the southern Philippines and Borneo via the Zamboanga Peninsula. To render the genus Tithaeus monophyletic, we synonymise Metatithaeus with Tithaeus (new synonymy).

Beaked whales are among the definitive host of the parasitic worm Anisakis Dujardin, 1845. In this study, molecular [using ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and mitochondrial DNA cytochrome c oxidase subunit 2 gene (mtDNA COX2)] and morphological (light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy) identifications of Anisakis from a rare Deraniyagala’s beaked whale Mesoplodon hotaula Deraniyagala, 1963 and Blainville’s beaked whale Mesoplodon densirostris Blainville, 1817 stranded in Davao Gulf, Southern Philippines are presented. Results conclusively revealed that the worm samples were A. ziphidarum, representing an additional geographical record for the species along the West Pacific region and a first record examined from the rare Deraniyagala’s beaked whale, representing a new host record for the species. Interestingly, both molecular and morphological data further revealed that the worms collected from Deraniyagala’s beaked whale consisted of two subgroups under the A. ziphidarum clade suggesting possible cryptic species, one of which is closely related to the Atlantic species while the other could be a local variant specific to the West Pacific.