Microcarbo

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Microcarbo
Microcarbo melanoleucos Austins Ferry 3.jpg
Little pied cormorant
Microcarbo melanoleucos
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Suliformes
Family: Phalacrocoracidae
Genus: Microcarbo
Bonaparte, 1856
Type species
Pelecanus pygmaeus (pygmy cormorant)
Pallas, 1773
Species

See text

Synonyms

Nanocorax (in part)

Microcarbo is a genus of fish-eating birds, known as cormorants, of the family Phalacrocoracidae. The genus was formerly subsumed within Phalacrocorax .

Contents

Microcarbo has been recognized as a valid genus by the IOC's World Bird List [1] on the basis of work by Siegel-Causey (1988), Kennedy et al. (2000), and Christidis and Boles (2008).

As suggested by the name, this genus contains the smallest of the world's cormorants. It is also the most basal, having diverged from the rest of the family between 12.8 to 15.4 million years ago. [2]

Taxonomy

The genus Microcarbo was introduced in 1856 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte with the pygmy cormorant as the type species. [3] [4] The name combines the Ancient Greek mikros meaning "small" with the genus name Carbo that was introduced by Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1789. [5]

The genus contains five species. [1]

List of species

ImageScientific nameCommon NameDistribution
Crowned Cormorant, Phalacrocorax coronatus.jpg Microcarbo coronatus Crowned cormorant Cape Agulhas north to Swakopmund along the coast of southern Africa
Little cormorant (Microcarbo niger) - 20070322.jpg Microcarbo niger Little cormorant Indian Subcontinent east to Java
Microcarbo melanoleucos Austins Ferry 3.jpg Microcarbo melanoleucos Little pied cormorant New Zealand, from Stewart Island to Northland, mainland Australia, Tasmania and Indonesia
Pygmy Cormorant (19511279462).jpg Microcarbo pygmaeus Pygmy cormorant south-east of Europe (east of Italy) and south-west of Asia, in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan
Long-tailed Cormorant - Gambia (31808209174).jpg Microcarbo africanus Reed cormorant Africa south of the Sahara, and Madagascar

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References

  1. 1 2 Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (August 2021). "Storks, frigatebirds, boobies, darters, cormorants". IOC World Bird List Version 12.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  2. Kennedy, Martyn; Spencer, Hamish G. (2014-10-01). "Classification of the cormorants of the world". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 79: 249–257. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2014.06.020. ISSN   1055-7903. PMID   24994028.
  3. Bonaparte, Charles Lucien (1856). "Excusion dans les divers Musées d'Allemagne, de Hollande et de Belgique, et tableaux paralléliques de l'ordre des échassiers (suite)". Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences (in French). 43: 571–579 [577].
  4. Mayr, Ernst; Cottrell, G. William, eds. (1979). Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 163.
  5. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 253. ISBN   978-1-4081-2501-4.