''Uria'' is a genus of seabirds in the

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 ...

family known in Britain as guillemots, in most of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

as murres, and in Newfoundland and Labrador as turr. These are medium-sized birds with mainly brown or black plumage in the breeding season. They breed on the coasts of the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Uria'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the common murre (''Uria aalge'') as the type species. The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''ouria'', a waterbird mentioned by Athenaeus. The English "guillemot" is from French ''guillemot'' probably derived from ''Guillaume'', "William". "Murre" is of uncertain origins, but may imitate the call of the common guillemot. ''Uria'' auks are relatives of the razorbill,

little auk The little auk or dovekie (''Alle alle'') is a small auk, the only member of the genus ''Alle''. ''Alle'' is the Sami name of the long-tailed duck; it is onomatopoeic and imitates the call of the drake duck. Linnaeus was not particularly famil ...

and the

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 ...

great auk The great auk (''Pinguinus impennis'') is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus ''Pinguinus''. It is not closely related to the birds now known as penguins, wh ...

and together make up the tribe Alcini. Despite the similar British common names, they are not so closely related to the '' Cepphus'' guillemots, which form the tribe Cepphini.

Extant species

The genus contains two species:

Description

These birds breed in large colonies on coastal cliffs, laying single elongated conical

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 ...

s directly on cliff ledges. They move south in winter to keep in ice-free waters. They dive for food from the surface, swimming underwater and being among the deepest divers of all birds, using their stubby wings to routinely dive to more than 100 meters, and feeding on fish and

crustacea Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...

ns, also some

mollusc Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

s, insects and plant material. Adult birds are black or brown on the head, neck, back and wings with white underparts. The bill is long and pointed. They have a small rounded black tail. The lower face becomes white in winter. The flight is strong and direct, and these species have fast wing beats due to the short wings. ''Uria'' guillemots produces a variety of harsh cackling calls at the breeding colonies, but are silent at sea.

Fossils

Some prehistoric ''Uria'' species are also known: * ''Uria bordkorbi'' Howard, 1981 ( Monterey or Sisquoc, Late Miocene of Lompoc, USA) * ''Uria affinis'' (Marsh, 1872) (Late Pleistocene of E USA) - possibly a subspecies of ''U. lomvia'' * ''Uria paleohesperis'' Howard, 1982 (Late Miocene of W USA) * ''Uria onoi'' Watanabe, Matsuoka and Hasegawa, 2016 (Middle-Late Pleistocene of Japan) ''U. brodkorbi'' is interesting insofar as it is the only known occurrence of the Alcini tribe in the temperate to subtropical Pacific, except for the very fringe of the range of ''U. aalge''. It suggests that the ''Uria'' species, which are the sister taxon to all the other Alcini, and like them are usually believed to have evolved in the Atlantic, may have evolved in the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

or possibly close to the

Isthmus of Panama The Isthmus of Panama ( es, Istmo de Panamá), also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien (), is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country ...

. The modern Pacific distribution would then be part of a later arctic expansion, whereas most other auk lineages form

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, ...

s with a continuous range in the Pacific, from arctic to subtropical waters.

References

External links

''Hunting ‘Turr’ in Newfoundland’s Frigid Waters'', New York Times, 4Dec. 201

{{Authority control Auks Atlantic auks Pacific auks Guillemots Bird genera