North Atlantic Little Shearwater
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| iNorth Atlantic Little Shearwater | ||||||||||||||
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| Puffinus (lherminieri) baroli Bonaparte, 1857 |
The North Atlantic Little Shearwater (Puffinus baroli), also known as the Macaronesian Shearwater, is a species of shearwater of doubtful validity. Two subspecies are recognised, P. b. baroli of Madeira and the Canary Islands and P. b. boydi of the Cape Verde Islands.
Until recently, it was considered conspecific with the Little Shearwater (Puffinus assimilis) of the Southern Hemisphere. mtDNA cytochrome b sequence analysis (Austin et al., 2004) indicates, however, that baroli and boydi are very close to the nominate subspecies of Audubon's Shearwater. Whether the morphological distinctness and the non-overlapping ranges, or the genetic similarity[1] are considered to be more significant is presently a matter of opinion, and the taxonomical status of these birds remains equivocal. The BOU, for example, accepts P. baroli as a distinct species[citation needed], but other institutions (such as BirdLife International) do not. The only thing that can at present be said quite certainly is that baroli and boydi are not subspecies of the Little Shearwater.
The binomial name commemorates the Italian Carlo Barolo.
[edit] References
- Austin, Jeremy J.; Bretagnolle, Vincent & Pasquet, Eric (2004): A global molecular phylogeny of the small Puffinus shearwaters and implications for systematics of the Little-Audubon's Shearwater complex. Auk 121(3): 847–864. DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2004)121[0847:AGMPOT]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract
- Collinson, M. (2006): Splitting headaches? Recent taxonomic changes affecting the British and Western Palaearctic lists. British Birds 99(6): 306-323.
- Rheindt, F. E. & Austin, Jeremy J. (2005): Major analytical and conceptual shortcomings in a recent taxonomic revision of the Procellariiformes - A reply to Penhallurick and Wink (2004). Emu 105(2): 181-186 PDF fulltext
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Note that mtDNA is of somewhat dubious value for species-level taxonomic revisions in Procellariiformes, due to these birds' long lifespan and some genetic peculiarities. See also Rheindt & Austin (2005).
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