Donegan, Thomas M. (2024)
On the nomenclature of wild and domestic Streptopelia doves. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 144:150-155.
On the nomenclature of wild and domestic Streptopelia doves
Abstract
Two competing names exist at species level for the Barbary Dove, Ringed Turtle-Dove or African Collared Dove:
Streptopelia risoria Linnaeus, 1758, based on a domestic neotype, and
S. roseogrisea Sundevall, 1857, on an ancestral wild African Collared Dove neotype. Van Grouw
et al. (2023) confirmed that Barbary Dove is descended from African Collared Dove and that they are conspecifics, albeit rather different genetically; they proposed recognising a monotypic
S. risoria for all populations. However, their taxonomy was rooted in the assumption that
S. risoria pertains to wild African Collared Doves, domestics being referred to as ‘
S. risoria domestica’, a
nomen nudum. I argue here that the outcome of ICZN (2008) and van Grouw
et al. is instead that the senior name
risoria applies at species rank for wild and domestic birds, but as a subspecies name solely to domesticates and introduced populations. It must be considered whether ancestral populations in Africa and the Middle East are sufficiently different from domesticates for subspecies
roseogrisea and
arabica to be recognised, which is the status quo and has some support in morphological and molecular data. This situation, where a domestic name is senior to one for phenotypically different wild populations is apparently unique in the animal kingdom. In a close vote, ICZN (2008) declined to give priority to the wild name
S. roseogrisea, but some Commissioners were open to review the situation. The inconsistency between ICZN (2008) and ICZN (2003) and the disruption that the former implies to the previously uncontested name for wild populations,
S. roseogrisea, appears to have led to widespread continuing recognition of
S. roseogrisea at species rank and van Grouw
et al.’s ‘
S. risoria domestica’, neither of which is Code compliant. A new ICZN proposal should therefore be considered.
