''Puffinus'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...

s in the order Procellariiformes that contains about 20 small to medium-sized

shearwater Shearwaters are medium-sized long-winged seabirds in the petrel family Procellariidae The family Procellariidae is a group of seabirds that comprises the fulmarine petrels, the gadfly petrels, the diving petrels, the prions, and the shearwa ...

s. Two other shearwater genera are named: ''

Calonectris ''Calonectris'' is a genus of seabirds. The genus name comes from Ancient Greek ''kalos'', "good" and ''nectris'', "swimmer". The genus comprises four large shearwaters. There are two other shearwater genera. ''Puffinus'', which comprises abou ...

'', which comprises three or four large shearwaters, and ''

Ardenna ''Ardenna'' is a genus of seabirds in the family Procellariidae. These medium-sized shearwater species were formerly included in the genus ''Puffinus''. Taxonomy A phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA published in 2004 found that ''Puff ...

'' with another seven species (formerly often included within ''Puffinus''). The taxonomy of this group is the cause of much debate, and the number of recognised species varies with the source. The species in this group are long-winged birds, dark brown or black above, and white to dark brown below. They are pelagic outside the breeding season. They are most common in temperate and cold waters. These tubenose

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 fly with stiff wings, and use a shearing flight technique to move across wave fronts with the minimum of active flight. Some small species, such as the

Manx shearwater The Manx shearwater (''Puffinus puffinus'') is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. The scientific name of this species records a name shift: Manx shearwaters were called Manks puffins in the 17th century. Puffin is an ...

, are cruciform in flight, with their long wings held directly out from their bodies. Many are long-distance migrants, perhaps most spectacularly the

sooty Sooty is a British children's television media franchise created by Harry Corbett incorporating primarily television and stage shows. The franchise originated with his fictional glove puppet character introduced to television in 1955, with the ...

and

short-tailed shearwater The short-tailed shearwater or slender-billed shearwater (''Ardenna tenuirostris''; formerly ''Puffinus tenuirostris''), also called yolla or moonbird, and commonly known as the muttonbird in Australia, is the most abundant seabird species in A ...

s, which perform migrations of 14,000 km or more each year. ''Puffinus'' shearwaters come to islands and coastal cliffs only to breed. They are nocturnal at the colonial breeding sites, preferring moonless nights to minimise predation. They nest in burrows and often give eerie contact calls on their night-time visits. They lay a single white

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

. They feed on

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

squid True squid are molluscs with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles in the superorder Decapodiformes, though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also called squid despite not strictly fitting t ...

and similar oceanic food. Some will follow fishing boats to take scraps, notably the sooty shearwater; these species also commonly follow

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

s to feed on fish disturbed by them.

Taxonomy

The

''Puffinus'' was introduced by the French zoologist

Mathurin Jacques Brisson Mathurin Jacques Brisson (; 30 April 1723 – 23 June 1806) was a French zoologist and natural philosopher. Brisson was born at Fontenay-le-Comte. The earlier part of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history; his published works ...

in 1760 with the

(''Puffinus puffinus'') 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 ...

. Traditionally, ''Puffinus'' has been grouped with the ''Procellaria'' and ''Calonectris'' shearwaters. However, more recent results have determined that the genus is apparently

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

and while in part very close to ''Calonectris'', forms a

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

with the genera ''

Pseudobulweria __NOTOC__ ''Pseudobulweria'' is a genus of seabirds in the family Procellariidae. They have long been retained with the gadfly petrel genus ''Pterodroma'' despite morphological differences. Mitochondrial DNA cytochrome ''b'' sequence analysis h ...

'' and '' Lugensa'', which were formerly presumed to be

gadfly petrel The gadfly petrels or ''Pterodroma'' are a genus of about 35 species of petrels, part of the seabird order Procellariiformes. The gadfly petrels are named for their speedy weaving flight, as if evading gadflies (horseflies). The flight action is ...

s, and can be divided in what has been called the "Puffinus" and the "Neonectris" group after notable species; the latter has been separated as a distinct genus named ''

''. The former is taxonomically confusing, with species having been split and remerged in the last years. ''Puffinus'' is a

New Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

based on the English "puffin". The original

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

term for shearwaters was usually the catchall name for sea-birds, '' mergus''. "Puffin" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn and puffing, referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the shearwater, a former delicacy. The original usage dates from at least 1337, but from as early as 1678 the term gradually came to be used for another, unrelated, seabird, the

Atlantic puffin The Atlantic puffin ('), also known as the common puffin, is a species of seabird in the auk family. It is the only puffin native to the Atlantic Ocean; two related species, the tufted puffin and the horned puffin is found in the northeastern ...

, an

auk An auk or alcid is a bird of the family Alcidae in the order Charadriiformes. The alcid family includes the murres, guillemots, auklets, puffins, and murrelets. The word "auk" is derived from Icelandic ''álka'', from Old Norse ''alka'' (a ...

. The current English name was first recorded in 1835 and refers to the former nesting of this species on the

Isle of Man ) , anthem = "O Land of Our Birth" , image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg , image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg , mapsize = , map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe , map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green) in Europe ...

Extant species

The genus ''Puffinus'' contains the following 21 species:

Phylogeny

Phylogeny of the genus based on a study by Joan Ferrer Obiol and collaborators published in 2022. Only 14 of the 21 recognised species were included.

Fossil record

Several

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

species which became extinct long ago are also known. The proportion of larger ("Neonectris") species apparently was larger before the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58marine mammals Marine mammals are aquatic mammals that rely on the ocean and other marine ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their relia ...

diversified: * "Puffinus" group ** Menorcan shearwater, ''Puffinus'' sp. (

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

) – possibly extirpated population of extant species; tentatively placed in this group **

Dune shearwater The dune shearwater (''Puffinus holeae''), also known as the Canarian shearwater or Hole's shearwater, was a relatively large shearwater which bred in the Canary Islands archipelago of the North Atlantic Ocean. Fossils have also been found ...

or Hole's shearwater, ''Puffinus holeae'' (

) **

Lava shearwater The lava shearwater (''Puffinus olsoni''), or Olson's shearwater, was a species of shearwater that bred on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. It is known from fossil remains, and was only described in 1990. It was intermediate ...

or Olson's shearwater, ''Puffinus olsoni'' (

) – tentatively placed in this group ** Bermuda shearwater, ''Puffinus parvus'' (

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

) – tentatively placed in this group ** Scarlett's shearwater, ''Puffinus spelaeus'' (

) ** ''Puffinus tedfordi'' (Pleistocene of western North America) ** ''

Puffinus nestori ''Puffinus nestori'' is an extinct seabird in the petrel family. Its fossil remains, dating from the late Pliocene to early Pleistocene, were found on the island of Ibiza of the Balearic archipelago in the western Mediterranean. It was specul ...

'' (Late Pliocene/Early Pleistocene of Ibiza) * "Neonectris" group ** ''Puffinus conradi'' (Early Miocene of Calvert County, US) ** ''Puffinus'' cf. ''tenuirostris'' (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of Lee Creek Mine, US) ** ''Puffinus'' sp. 1 (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of Lee Creek Mine, US) ** ''Puffinus'' sp. 2 (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of Lee Creek Mine, US) ** '' Puffinus pacificoides'' (Pleistocene of Saint Helena, Atlantic) * Unassigned ** ''?Puffinus raemdonckii'' (Early Oligocene of Belgium) – formerly in ''

Larus ''Larus'' is a large genus of gulls with worldwide distribution (by far the greatest species diversity is in the Northern Hemisphere). Many of its species are abundant and well-known birds in their ranges. Until about 2005–2007, most gulls ...

'' ** ''Puffinus micraulax'' (Early Miocene of C Florida, US) – probably "Puffinus" group ** ''Puffinus'' sp. (Early Miocene of Calvert County, US) ** ''Puffinus'' sp. (Early Pliocene of South Africa) ** ''Puffinus felthami'' (Pleistocene of W North America) ** ''Puffinus kanakoffi'' (Pleistocene of W North America) ''"Puffinus" arvernensis'' (Early Miocene of France) is now considered a primitive

albatross Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes (the tubenoses). They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacifi ...

of the fossil genus '' Plotornis''.

Taxonomy

Extant species

Phylogeny

Fossil record

See also

References

Further reading