The Founding Feathers: the true ancestry of the domestic Barbary Dove

Abstract

In 2008 the International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) ruled that the name Streptopelia risoria (Linnaeus, 1758) should have priority for both African Collared Dove and its domestic form, Barbary Dove, as it is senior to S. roseogrisea (Sundevall, 1857). Many ignored the ruling in the belief that the ancestry of Barbary Dove is still unproven. Given the lack of a namebearing specimen and in anticipation of the ICZN decision, in 2008 a neotype was designated for S. risoria. To clarify the taxonomic status of roseogrisea, as its original type series was mixed, in 2018 a neotype was also designated for this junior synonym of African Collared Dove. As the species was assumed to be polytypic, synonymisation of roseogrisea with risoria at species level was questioned thereafter. The results of a whole genome-resequencing study now show that African Collared Dove is the principal ancestor of Barbary Dove, and that the species is monotypic.