Greater Scaup - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The genus name Aythya is derived from the Ancient Greek aithuia which refers to a seabird mentioned by Aristotle and others and is thought to refer to a duck, auklet or other seabird. The species name marila is from the Greek word for charcoal embers or coal dust. The Greater Scaup was first studied by Linnaeus in 1761. Male Greater Scaup from America are distinguishable from those in Europe and Asia by the stronger vermiculations, worm-like carvings or marks on the mantle and scapulars, and are considered a separate subspecies, A. m. nearctica. Females of the two subspecies are indistinguishable. Based on size differences, a Pleistocene paleosubspecies, Aythya marila asphaltica, has also been described by Serebrovskij in 1941 from fossils recovered at Binagady, Azerbaijan. The Greater Scaup's name may come from "scalp", a Scottish and Northern English word for a shellfish bed, or from the duck's mating call: "scaup scaup".

A phylogenetic analysis of the diving ducks, examining the skeletal anatomy and skin, found that the Greater and Lesser Scaups are each other's closest relatives, with the Tufted Duck as the next closest relative of the pair.