The blue-spotted wood dove (''Turtur afer'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in the family

Columbidae Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

. It is abundantly present throughout

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

south of the Sahel; it is partially present in East Africa and absent in southern Africa.

Taxonomy

In 1760 the French zoologist

Mathurin Jacques Brisson Mathurin Jacques Brisson (; 30 April 1723 – 23 June 1806) was a French zoologist and natural philosopher. Brisson was born at Fontenay-le-Comte. The earlier part of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history; his published works ...

included a description of the blue-spotted wood dove in his six volume ''Ornithologie'' based on a specimen collected in Senegal. He used the French name ''La tourterelle de Sénégal'' and the Latin ''Turtur senegalensis''. The two stars (**) at the start of the section indicates that Brisson based his description on the examination of a specimen. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...

updated his '' Systema Naturae'' for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the blue-spotted wood dove which he placed with all the other pigeons in the genus '' Columba''. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name ''Columba afra'' and cited Brisson's work. The specific name ''afer'' is the Latin word for "Africa". The species is now placed in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

Turtur ''Turtur'' is a small genus of doves native to Sub-Saharan Africa. Species in this genus are known as wood doves. The genus ''Turtur'' was introduced in 1783 by the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert to accommodate the blue-spotted wood dove Th ...

'' that was introduced in 1783 by the Dutch naturalist

Pieter Boddaert Pieter Boddaert (1730 – 6 May 1795) was a Dutch physician and naturalist. Early life, family and education Boddaert was the son of a Middelburg jurist and poet by the same name (1694–1760). The younger Pieter obtained his M.D. at the Univers ...

. The species is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

: no subspecies are recognised.

References

External links

Xeno-canto: audio recordings of the blue-spotted wood dove
* Blue-spotted wood dove
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Authority control blue-spotted wood dove blue-spotted wood dove blue-spotted wood dove Taxonomy articles created by Polbot