Phalacrocorax

Phalacrocorax
Great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Suliformes
Family:	Phalacrocoracidae
Genus:	Phalacrocorax Brisson, 1760
Type species
Pelecanus carbo Linnaeus, 1758
Species
12, see text
Synonyms
Stictocarbo Nanocorax (in part) Anocarbo

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 Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) as the type species. Phalacrocorax is the Latin word for a cormorant.

Formerly, many other species of cormorant were classified in Phalacrocorax, but most of these have been split out into different genera. A 2014 study found Phalacrocrax to be the sister genus to Urile, which are thought to have split from each other between 8.9 - 10.3 million years ago.

Current taxonomy

A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that the genus Phalacrocorax contains 12 species. This taxonomy was adopted by the IUCN Red List and BirdLife International, and later by the IOC.

Image	Scientific name	Common Name	Distribution
	Phalacrocorax neglectus	Bank cormorant or Wahlberg's cormorant	Namibia and the western seaboard of South Africa
	Phalacrocorax nigrogularis	Socotra cormorant	Arabian Peninsula.
	Phalacrocorax featherstoni	Pitt shag or Featherstone's shag	Pitt Island.
	Phalacrocorax punctatus	Spotted shag	New Zealand.
	Phalacrocorax fuscescens	Black-faced cormorant	Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania
	Phalacrocorax varius	Australian pied cormorant or yellow-faced cormorant	Australasia, New Zealand
	Phalacrocorax sulcirostris	Little black cormorant	Australia and northern New Zealand
	Phalacrocorax fuscicollis	Indian cormorant	Indian Subcontinent west to Sind and east to Thailand and Cambodia.
	Phalacrocorax capensis	Cape cormorant	the Congo, and up the east coast of South Africa as far as Mozambique.
	Phalacrocorax capillatus	Japanese cormorant or Temminck's cormorant	Taiwan, north through Korea and Japan, to the Russian Far East.
	Phalacrocorax lucidus	White-breasted cormorant	the Cape Verde Islands to Guinea-Bissau and from Angola to the Cape of Good Hope and northwards on the east coast to Mozambique.
	Phalacrocorax carbo	Great cormorant or black shag	the Old World, Australia, and the Atlantic coast of North America.

Alternative taxonomies

Formerly, the genus Phalacrocorax often included all members of the family Phalacrocoracidae. More recently, some authorities, such as the Clements checklist, recognized Microcarbo as distinct (due to its morphological distinctiveness and the old age of its split from the remaining cormorants), while retaining all other cormorants in a still-broad Phalacrocorax. The IOC checklist went a step further in recognizing Leucocarbo as well as Microcarbo as distinct (while retaining the rest in Phalacrocorax), but this treatment rendered Phalacrocorax paraphyletic (with some members much more closely related to Leucocarbo than others). Nowadays, due to the age of the splits between different cormorant clades, most authorities, including the aforementioned two checklists, now recognize seven cormorant genera: Microcarbo, Poikilocarbo, Phalacrocorax, Urile, Gulosus, Nannopterum, and Leucocarbo.