Barolo shearwater | |
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Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Procellariiformes |
Family: | Procellariidae |
Genus: | Puffinus |
Species: | P. baroli, see text |
Binomial name | |
Puffinus baroli, see text Bonaparte, 1857 |
The Barolo shearwater (Puffinus baroli), also known as the North Atlantic little shearwater or Macaronesian shearwater, is a small shearwater which breeds in the Azores and Canaries of Macaronesia in the North Atlantic Ocean. Puffinus is a New Latin loanword based on the English "puffin" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn and puffing, that referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the Manx shearwater, a former delicacy. The specific baroli refers to Carlo Tencredi Falletti, marquis of Barolo.
It was previously considered conspecific with the little shearwater (Puffinus assimilis) of the Southern Hemisphere. 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 are considered to be more significant is a matter of opinion, and the taxonomic status of these birds remains equivocal. Although some institutions (such as BirdLife International) retain the forms baroli and boydi within little shearwater, this is as a result of inaccurate lumping in the past, and is not supported by modern evidence. The British Ornithologists' Union has accepted P. baroli as a distinct species (Sangster et al. 2005), as has Clements Checklist. The American Ornithologists' Union followed in 2013.