Yelkouan Shearwater

About the Yelkouan Shearwater

The yelkouan shearwater, Levantine shearwater or Mediterranean shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus).

The yelkouan shearwater was formally described in 1827 by the Italian naturalist Giuseppe Acerbi from specimens collected in the Bosphorus, Turkey. He placed the shearwater in the genus Procellaria and coined the binomial name Procellaria yelkouan. The yelkouan shearwater is now placed in the genus Puffinus was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The genus name Puffinus is Neo-Latin based on the English "puffin". The specific yelkouan is the Turkish word "wind chaser" for a shearwater. The yelkouan shearwater is considered to be monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

It was formerly considered a subspecies of the Manx shearwater. After the first split, it was the nominate subspecies of the so-called "Mediterranean shearwater" for nearly ten more years; it is considered a monotypic species now, as the Balearic form mauretanicus has been separated as the Balearic shearwater.

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