Data from: Phylogenomic, morphological and acoustic data support a revised taxonomy of the lissodelphinine dolphin subfamily

The dolphin genus Lagenorhynchus has included six
species of dolphins characterized by short, wide rostra. Genetic analyses
have consistently found the genus to be polyphyletic with four of the
species being included in the subfamily Lissodelphininae. A recent paper
synthesized available molecular, morphological and acoustic evidence to
support a taxonomic revision of the genus, assigning L.
obliquidens, L. obscurus, L. australis and L.
cruciger to the genus Sagmatias within
Lissodelphiniae. Here, we add new phylogenomic data to a previously
analyzed dataset including over 3000 nuclear genes and complete
mitochondrial genomes and reevaluate morphological and acoustic evidence
for the phylogenetic relationships among the Lissodelphininae. We find
strong molecular evidence that L.
australis and L. cruciger are more closely
related to the four members of the
genus Cephalorhynchus than they are to L.
obliquidens and L. obscurus. Independently of
the molecular data, the available morphological and acoustic evidence
supports these relationships. As a consequence, to achieve monophyletic
taxonomic units, we propose inclusion of L.
australis and L.
cruciger in Cephalorhynchus. As Sagmatias
australis is the type species
of Sagmatias, which now falls in synonymy
with Cephalorhynchus, and as there is no previous available
generic name for L. obliquidens and L.
obscurus, we propose a new genus for these two
species, Aethalodelphis, meaning sooty or dusky dolphin.