Phalacrocorax is agenus of fish-eating birds in the cormorant familyPhalacrocoracidae. Members of this genus are also known as theOld World cormorants.[2]
Formerly, many other species of cormorant were classified inPhalacrocorax, but most of these have been split out into different genera. A 2014 study foundPhalacrocrax to be thesister genus toUrile, which are thought to have split from each other between 8.9 - 10.3 million years ago.[1]
Formerly, the genusPhalacrocorax often included all members of the family Phalacrocoracidae. More recently, some authorities, such as theClements checklist, recognizedMicrocarbo 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-broadPhalacrocorax. TheIOC checklist went a step further in recognizingLeucocarbo as well asMicrocarbo as distinct (while retaining the rest inPhalacrocorax), but this treatment renderedPhalacrocoraxparaphyletic (with some members much more closely related toLeucocarbo 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, andLeucocarbo.[1]
^Brisson, Mathurin Jacques (1760).Ornithologie, ou, Méthode Contenant la Division des Oiseaux en Ordres, Sections, Genres, Especes & leurs Variétés (in French and Latin). Paris: Jean-Baptiste Bauche.Vol. 1, p. 60,Vol. 6, p. 511.
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