Phoca Linnaeus, 1758. Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:37.

TYPE SPECIES: Phoca vitulina Linnaeus, 1758, by tautonomy.

COMMENTS: Burns and Fay (1970), Rice (1977), McDermid and Bonner (1975), Gromov and Baranova (1981), J. E. King (1983), and Wyss (1988) considered Phoca, Pusa, Histriophoca, and Pagophilus a monophyletic group. However, Muizon (1982a) suggested that Histricophoca and Pagophilus may be more closely related to Cystophora than to Phoca (sensu stricto). Burns and Fay (1970) and McDermid and Bonner (1975) argued that these differences should be recognized only at the subgeneric level which is followed here.