The blue-spotted wood dove or blue-spotted dove (Turtur afer) is a species of bird in the family Columbidae. It is abundantly present throughout Africa south of the Sahel; it is partially present in East Africa and absent in southern Africa.
| Blue-spotted wood dove | |
|---|---|
 | |
| In Gambia | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Columbiformes |
| Family: | Columbidae |
| Genus: | Turtur |
| Species: | T. afer |
| Binomial name | |
| Turtur afer (Linnaeus, 1766) | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson 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.[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.[3] 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.[4] The specific name afer is the Latin word for "Africa".[5] The species is now placed in the genus Turtur that was introduced in 1783 by the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert.[6][7] The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.[7]
References
External links
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