Blue-spotted wood dove | |
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In Gambia | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Columbiformes |
Family: | Columbidae |
Genus: | Turtur |
Species: | T. afer |
Binomial name | |
Turtur afer (Linnaeus, 1766) | |
Synonyms | |
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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.
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]