Remarks on the Taxonomy of Some American Doves

In his catalogue of the pigeons Salvadori (1893) listed the four genera Zenaida, Zenaidura, Nesopelia and Melopelia in his sub-family Zenaidinae. He distinguished the first two as having "moderate and straight" bills and fourteen tail feathers, the tail of Zenaidura being "rather long, graduated or cuneate" and that of Zenaida "moderate and rounded". Nesopelia (containing the Galapagos Dove) he characterised as having twelve tail feathers, a "rather short and rounded" tail and the bill "rather long and much bent downwards", Melopelia (the Whitewinged Dove) on its lack of certain signal markings and possession of others, and also on slight differences in the shape of the inner webs of the first two primaries. Ridgway (1916) followed this classification. Peters (1934) pointed out that only one of the species, the South American auriculata, placed in Zenaida by these authors had in fact fourteen tail feathers, the others having twelve. He accordingly placed auriculata in the genus Zenaidura. He made Melopelia congeneric with Zenaida, remarking that he had looked in vain for any characters "of generic value" to separate them. He maintained Nesopelia by reason of its "short tail... and strongly decurved bill". Hellmayr and Conover (1942) followed Peters, placing the Mourning Dove Zenaidura macroura (Linnaeus) and the Eared Dove Z. auriculata (Des Murs) in Zenaidura; the Zenaida Dove Zenaida aurita (Temminck) and the White-winged Dove Z. asiatica (Linnaeus) in Zenaida, and the Galapagos Dove Nesopelia galapagoensis (Gould) in the monotypic genus Nesopelia. The A.O.U. Check-list (1957: 260-262) similarly separates Zenaidura and Zenaida.