The maguari stork (Ciconia maguari) is a large species of stork that inhabits seasonal wetlands over much of South America, and is very similar in appearance to the white stork; albeit slightly larger. It is the only species of its genus to occur in the New World and is one of the only three New World stork species, together with the wood stork and the jabiru. Taxonomy The maguari stork was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the herons, cranes and storks in the genus Ardea and coined the binomial name Ardea maguari. Gmelin's description was ultimately based on the "Maguari Brasiliensibus" that had been described and illustrated in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in his book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. The maguari stork is now one of seven storks placed in the genus Ciconia that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The genus name is the Latin word for "stork". The specific epithet maguari and the common name are from the Tupi language, "Maguarí" or "Baguarí" means "heavy bill". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. This stork was formerly placed in its own genus Euxenura, but was later reclassified as belonging to Ciconia because of its strong morphological and ethological similarity to other storks of this genus. However, the maguari stork most closely resembles both the white stork and the Oriental stork in morphology and behaviour; and strongly resembles the white stork in its manner of performing the up-down greeting display. Plumage pattern and soft part colourations are also very similar between these three stork species. Further, phylogenetic analyses based on a portion of the cytochrome b oxidase gene have suggested that the maguari stork is evolutionarily paired with the white stork-Oriental stork sister group; although the morphological similarity between the maguari stork and the Oriental stork has been considered to be greater than between the white stork and the Oriental stork. Incidentally, the maguari stork also shares the prominent forkedness of its tail with the woolly-necked stork (Ciconia episcopus). Fossils of the extinct Pleistocene stork Ciconia maltha discovered in North America appear to be morphologically intermediate between the maguari stork and white stork and may therefore represent a common ancestral link between these two species that inhabit different continents. Ciconia