 The population from southern Chile is considered a separate subspecies, "P. m. navasi".The great grebe was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his "Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux".The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the "Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle" which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.