Microcarbo
# Microcarbo

Microcarbo is a genus of fish-eating birds, known as cormorants, of the family Phalacrocoracidae. The genus was formerly subsumed within Phalacrocorax.

Microcarbo has been recognized as a valid genus by the IOC's World Bird List on the basis of work by Siegel-Causey (1988), Kennedy et al. (2000), and Christidis and Boles (2008).

As suggested by the name, this genus contains the smallest of the world's cormorants. It is also the most basal, having diverged from the rest of the family between 12.8 to 15.4 million years ago.

## Taxonomy

The genus Microcarbo was introduced in 1856 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte with the pygmy cormorant as the type species. The name combines the Ancient Greek mikros meaning "small" with the genus name Carbo that was introduced by Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1789.

The genus contains five species.

## List of species

| Scientific name | Common Name | Distribution |
| - | - | - |
| Microcarbo coronatus | Crowned cormorant | Cape Agulhas north to Swakopmund along the coast of southern Africa |
| Microcarbo niger | Little cormorant | Indian Subcontinent east to Java |
| Microcarbo melanoleucos | Little pied cormorant | New Zealand, from Stewart Island to Northland, mainland Australia, Tasmania and Indonesia |
| Microcarbo pygmaeus | Pygmy cormorant | south-east of Europe (east of Italy) and south-west of Asia, in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan |
| Microcarbo africanus | Reed cormorant | Africa south of the Sahara, and Madagascar |

* †Serventys' cormorant, Microcarbo serventyorum
