Abstract
The specimen in Liverpool known as Forbes' Lemon Dove, collected pre-1844 purportedly in Cayenne (French Guiana), was catalogued by Forbes & Robinson in 1900 as Haplopelia principalis, despite this species having been described from the island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea. As a result of the discrepancy in localities, the Liverpool specimen was subsequently described as a new species (Haplopelia forbesi) by Salvadori and suggested to be from West Africa. Over the course of the next century, the new taxon was subject to a variety of taxonomic treatments. To investigate the status and provenance of Forbes' Lemon Dove, we obtained a 472 bp cyt-b sequence from the specimen. This possessed 100% similarity with a Lemon Dove Columba (Aplopelia) larvata sequence from Príncipe and 99.79% similarity with a sequence of the same species from São Tomé. This suggests that Forbes & Robinson were correct that the specimen represents A. larvata principalis and was thus probably collected on Príncipe. However, more sequencing from across the Lemon Dove's range is required to resolve the taxonomy of this complex group and place Forbes' Lemon Dove more definitively.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 131-137 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club |
| Volume | 142 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 11 Mar 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgements:Alex Bond (NHMUK) and Rachel Petts (Manchester Museum) provided information about the only other specimen known to have been identified as Haplopelia forbesi. We are grateful to Martim Melo and Luís Lima Valente for access to Hugo José Eira Pereira's M.Sc. thesis and information about recent Lemon Dove samples collected in the Gulf of Guinea. We are indebted to Peter Jones for invaluable comments on the manuscript. Robert Prŷs-Jones, Alan Tye and an anonymous reviewer provided very helpful suggestions on the submitted draft.