The many-colored fruit dove (''Ptilinopus perousii''), also known as ''manuma'' in the

Samoan language Samoan ( or ; ) is a Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language, alon ...

, is a species of bird in the family Columbidae. It occurs on islands in the south-west Pacific Ocean where it is found in

Fiji Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists ...

, the Samoan Islands, and Tonga. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. Today, the birds are most often found in

and Tonga. It usually feeds high in the canopy on fruit and berries, especially banyan

fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

. The nest is a small platform of twigs where one white

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

is laid.

Description

It is a small dove, in length. Adults weigh in at . The male is mostly pale yellow-white with a red crown and red bar across the back. The female is mostly green, darker on the back and greyer on the head and breast. Her crown is red while the undertail-coverts are red in Samoan birds and yellow in birds from Fiji and Tonga. Male Ptilinopus perousii perousii is pale on the bottom and yellow on top. There is also a crimson band and corona. The female is said to resemble the

purple-capped fruit dove The purple-capped fruit dove or Pohnpei fruit dove (''Ptilinopus ponapensis''), is a species of bird in the family Columbidae found on Chuuk and Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. It was formerly considered as a subspecies of the crimson-crowned ...

; however, there is no yellow band. They have grey on the bottom while green on top. It only has a crimson corona unlike the male.

Taxonomy

The many-colored fruit dove is in the

columbid Columbidae () is a bird Family (biology), family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the Order (biology), order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species fe ...

family with the other doves and pigeons. It a

fruit dove The fruit doves, also known as fruit pigeons, are a genus (''Ptilinopus'') of birds in the pigeon and dove family (Columbidae). These colourful, frugivorous doves are found in forests and woodlands in Southeast Asia and Oceania. It is a large gen ...

meaning it belongs to genus '' Ptilinopus''. However, it is very far from most other doves and has no close relatives due to it being endemic to the South Pacific islands. The two subspecies are ''Ptilinopus perousii mariae'' and ''P. p. perousii''. The ''mariae'' subspecies is found in

and Tonga. Its English name is literal: it is a many-colored dove that eats fruit. The Samoan name ''manuma'' means shy bird and comes from the Samoan words for bird and shame. Their Latin name honors Captain Jean Francois de Galaup Comte de la Pérouse of the French navy and explored the Pacific.

Distribution and habitat

Manuma are found across many islands and archipelagos across Polynesia with a range of 660,000 sq. km. They are most often found in Fiji and Tonga. They can be found in lowland subtropical and tropical broadleaf forests. In these forests, they are found in the canopies. They can also be found in urban areas. The manuma's fossil range is from 0.12 million years ago to today, exclusively in the quaternary.

Behavior

Diet

The many-colored fruit dove is a

frugivore A frugivore is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance an ...

. It forages the canopies of trees in search of

s. On Samoa and American Samoa it is mostly the banyan. This strict diet keeps the two fig species in check; however, any decline in the amount of figs may be a disaster for the many-colored fruit dove. However, on Fiji and Tonga, they are known to eat fruits of ylang ylang ('' Cananga odorata''), bishop wood (''

Bischofia javanica ''Bischofia javanica'', or bishop wood, is a plant species of the family Phyllanthaceae. It and the related '' Bischofia polycarpa'' are the only two members of genus '' Bischofia'' and tribe Bischofieae. These species are distributed throughout ...

''), and ('' Trema cannabina'').

Social

Manuma are often found in small flocks. In each flock there are normally more males than females.

Status

While not listed as threatened or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), their population is in decline in American Samoa. The justification of the conservation status is that the decline is not extreme enough and the restricted area is not small enough for the vulnerability status. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of this bird were reported on Tutuila, American Samoa. In the 1970s, a population survey found there were around 80 individuals present. In the 1990s, there were 50 individuals on Tutuila reported. Biologists with the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources and workers from Pacific Bird Conservation and the

Toledo Zoo The Toledo Zoo & Aquarium, located in Toledo, Ohio, is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), and is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), through the year 2022. The Toledo Zoo & Aquarium houses over ...

captured four many-colored fruit dove to begin a captive breeding project at Association of Zoos and Aquariums facilities. The many-colored fruit dove chief food source, the banyan fruit, are also in decline due to deforestation and their susceptibility to storm damage. In the 1990s,

Cyclone Val Severe Tropical Cyclone Val was considered to be the worst tropical cyclone to affect the Samoan Islands since the 1889 Apia cyclone. The system that was to become Severe Tropical Cyclone Val was first identified during the opening days of Decem ...

and

Cyclone Ofa Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa was a powerful tropical cyclone that caused severe damage in Polynesia in February of 1990. The system was first noted on January 27, 1990, near Tuvalu, as a shallow tropical depression that had developed within the Sou ...

killed or damaged a number of banyan trees, or otherwise stripped them bare of leaves and fruit. Hunting is another cause of the bird's decline on Tutuila. Hunters in search of ''lupe'' (

Pacific imperial pigeon The Pacific imperial pigeon (''Ducula pacifica'') is a widespread species of pigeon in the family Columbidae. It is found in American Samoa, the Cook Islands, the smaller islands of eastern Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, the smaller satellite islands of ...

, ''Ducula pacifica'') or ''manutagi'' ( purple-capped fruit-doves, ''Ptilinopus porphyraceus'') may kill many-colored fruit doves instead. In interviews conducted by American Samoa environmental officials, more than a quarter of hunters reported accidentally shooting a many-colored fruit dove.