''Microcarbo'' is a genus of fish-eating

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

s, known as

cormorant Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the IOC adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven ge ...

s, of the family

Phalacrocoracidae Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the IOC adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven gen ...

. The genus was formerly subsumed within ''

Phalacrocorax ''Phalacrocorax'' is a genus of fish-eating birds in the cormorant family Phalacrocoracidae. Members of this genus are also known as the Old World cormorants. Taxonomy The genus ''Phalacrocorax'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin ...

''. ''Microcarbo'' has been recognized as a valid genus by the IOC's World Bird List 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.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Microcarbo'' was introduced in 1856 by the French naturalist

Charles Lucien Bonaparte Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano (24 May 1803 – 29 July 1857), was a French naturalist and ornithologist. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte. Life and career ...

with the

pygmy cormorant The pygmy cormorant (''Microcarbo pygmaeus'') is a member of the Phalacrocoracidae (cormorant) family of seabirds. It breeds in south-eastern Europe and south-western Asia. It is partially migratory, with northern populations wintering further ...

as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

. The name combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''mikros'' meaning "small" with the genus name ''Carbo'' that was introduced by

Bernard Germain de Lacépède Bernard-Germain-Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède or La Cépède (; 26 December 17566 October 1825) was a French naturalist and an active freemason. He is known for his contribution to the Comte de Buffon's great work, the ...

in 1789. The genus contains five species.

List of species

*†Serventys' cormorant, ''

Microcarbo serventyorum '' Microcarbo serventyorum'', also referred to as Serventys' cormorant, is an extinct species of small cormorant from the Holocene of Australia. It was described by Gerard Frederick van Tets from subfossil skeletal material (a pelvis with ...

References

*Christidis, L., and W. E. Boles. 2008. ''Systematics and taxonomy of Australian birds''. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, Australia. *Kennedy, M., R. D. Gray, and H. G. Spencer. 2000. The phylogenetic relationships of the shags and cormorants: can sequence data resolve a disagreement between behavior and morphology? Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 17: 345–359. *Siegel-Causey, D. 1988. Phylogeny of the Phalacrocoracidae. Condor 90: 885–905. Available a

(Accessed 13 May 2010). {{Taxonbar, from=Q128189 Microcarbo, Bird genera Taxa named by Charles Lucien Bonaparte