Topic summary
Hydrobatidae
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Northern storm petrel.
Taxonomy
The family Hydrobatidae was introduced with Hydrobates as the type genus by the Australian born ornithologist Gregory Mathews in 1912. The background is complicated as the family Hydrobatidae had originally been introduced in 1849 with Hydrobata as the type genus by the French zoologist Côme-Damien Degland. Hydrobata had been erected in 1816 for species in the dipper family Cinclidae by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. In 1992 the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) suppressed the genus Hydrobata Vieillot, 1816. Under the rules of the ICZN the family Hydrobatidae Degland, 1849 thus became unavailable as the type genus had been suppressed. This cleared the way for the family Hydrobatidae introduced in 1912 by Mathews.