Daly Noll
Describió la primera especie nueva de pingüino en más de un siglo, leyendo el ADN de colonias repartidas por todo el océano Austral.
For more than a century, the gentoo penguin was one species. Colonies spread across thousands of kilometres of the Southern Ocean —from the Antarctic Peninsula to subantarctic islands out of sight of one another— all fell under the same name: Pygoscelis papua.
In April 2026, a study with Daly Noll as first author split them into four. And one of those four, the one on the Kerguelen Islands, had no name: it is the first penguin species described in over a hundred years.
Four evolutionary paths where only one was seen
The underlying question was not taxonomic but evolutionary: if a group of populations has been kept apart by ocean and ice for long enough, is it still the same thing? The team sequenced whole genomes of gentoo penguins from colonies across the Southern Ocean and looked in them for the traces of that separation.
What they found was not minor variation within one species but four lineages that have gone unmixed for long enough to follow paths of their own: Pygoscelis papua, P. ellsworthi, P. taeniata and P. kerguelensis. The last one is new to science.
In the Southern Ocean, these environmental differences have driven gentoo penguins down distinct and independent evolutionary paths, showing a process of speciation.
Daly Noll, Millennium Institute BASE press release, translated from Spanish
"It is not just about reading DNA, but about knowing where to look"
Reading a whole genome stopped being the hard part years ago. The hard part is interpreting it: a genome carries millions of differences, and the vast majority mean nothing. Telling the ones that reflect real adaptation from the noise is the craft.
The environment is not just the stage where organisms live, it is also a force that shapes their DNA over time, leaving traces in their genome.
Daly Noll, Millennium Institute BASE press release, translated from Spanish
The work is also a long-delayed answer: in an interview with BioBioChile, Noll says the result did not surprise her, because the team had spent years arguing that gentoos should be treated as separate communities. What she did not expect was the reach it would have.
Counting four threatened species instead of one abundant bird
This is not an argument about nomenclature. Conservation status is assessed on the total number of individuals: while the four lineages counted as one, the gentoo penguin looked like a numerous species in no particular trouble.
Counted apart, the picture changes — three of the four are threatened, and each faces its own ocean, its own temperature and its own food supply. A conservation policy designed for "the gentoo penguin" protects none of the four in particular.
And how it is known
She is first author of "Integrative evidence reveals adaptive divergence and speciation in gentoo penguins", Communications Biology, 23 April 2026.
Verified against Crossref (DOI 10.1038/s42003-026-10081-7), which is the publisher's own record and not a press release.
The study raises the gentoo penguins to four species, including one new to science: Pygoscelis kerguelensis.
Agrees across the Millennium Institute BASE release, the UC Berkeley release —a co-authoring institution— and press coverage.
Whole genomes of 64 individuals from 10 colonies were analysed, along with more than 9 million genetic variants.
The figures appear in press coverage. They could not be confirmed against the original article, which is behind restricted access.
She is currently an academic at Universidad de Los Lagos and an affiliated researcher at the BASE and CRG Millennium Institutes.
That is what her own institute's release says, and it is the most recent source. The UC Berkeley release places her at Universidad de Chile, probably her affiliation at the time of the study; both can be true at different moments.
Her training: marine biology and a master's at Universidad Andrés Bello, doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Universidad de Chile.
It appears in summaries of her institutional profile, but that page could not be opened directly. No source gives a verifiable date of birth, which is why this entry states no age.
- Communications Biology — el paper (DOI). Noll et al., «Integrative evidence reveals adaptive divergence and speciation in gentoo penguins», 23 de abril de 2026. Ella es primera autora.
View source → - Instituto Milenio BASE. Comunicado de su propio instituto, con sus citas textuales.
View source → - UC Berkeley — comunicado. La institución coautora del estudio confirma que es primera autora.
View source → - BioBioChile — entrevista. Reporteo propio, con declaraciones suyas que no están en los comunicados.
View source →
How to cite
This is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, as long as you give credit.
FísicaEterna. (2026). Daly Noll — biography, FísicaEterna. Retrieved [access date] from https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/daly-noll
@misc{fisicaeterna_daly_noll,
author = {FísicaEterna},
title = {Daly Noll — biography, FísicaEterna},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/daly-noll},
note = {CC BY 4.0}
}