Little pied cormorant
| Little pied cormorant | |
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| M. melanoleucos | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Suliformes |
| Family: | Phalacrocoracidae |
| Genus: | Microcarbo |
| Species: | M. melanoleucos |
| Binomial name | |
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Microcarbo melanoleucos (Vieillot, 1817) |
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| Range of the Little Pied Comorant | |
| Synonyms | |
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Phalacrocorax melanoleucos |
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Phalacrocorax melanoleucos
Anhinga parva
The little pied cormorant, little shag or kawaupaka (Microcarbo melanoleucos) is a common Australasian waterbird, found around the coasts, islands, estuaries, and inland waters of Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and around the islands of the south-western Pacific and the subantarctic. It is a small short-billed cormorant usually black above and white below with a yellow bill and small crest, although a mostly black white-throated form predominates in New Zealand. Three subspecies are recognised. Until recently most authorities referred to this species as Phalacrocorax melanoleucus.
The species is known as the little pied cormorant in Australia, and as the little shag or by the Māori name of kawaupaka in New Zealand. The term white-throated shag is also reserved for the melanistic form there.
The little pied cormorant was originally described by French naturalist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1817. Its specific epithet is derived from the Ancient Greek words melano- "black", and leukos "white". In 1931, American ornithologist James Lee Peters was the first to consider this in a separate genus along with the pygmy cormorant (M. pygmaeus), little cormorant (M. niger), and the long-tailed cormorant (M. africanus). Since then, molecular work by Sibley and Ahlquist showed the little pied and long-tailed cormorants formed a group which had diverged early on from other cormorants. This group of "micro-cormorants" assumed the genus name Microcarbo, initially described by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1855. The generic name is derived from the Ancient Greek mikros "small", and Latin carbo "black". However, most older authorities refer to this species as Phalacrocorax melanoleucus.
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Wikipedia