• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Columbiformes (1 Viewer)

Is there any evidence that endemic doves or pigeons once occurred on the Hawaiian Islands? I mean pigeons are known to colonise the most remote islands (e.g. St Helena, Galapagos) so why not Hawaii?
 
Last edited:
Melanie said:
Is there any evidence that endemic doves or pigeons once occurred on the Hawaiian Islands? I mean pigeons are known to colonise the most remote islands (e.g. St Helena, Galapagos) so why not Hawaii?
Click to expand...

Possibly not ... I can see no mention of Columbidae among the historically-known extinct birds of the Hawaii group, nor among those known only as fossils in:

Descriptions of Thirty-Two New Species of Birds from the Hawaiian Islands: Part I. Non- Passeriformes
Author(s): Storrs L. Olson and Helen F. JamesSource: Ornithological Monographs, No. 45, Descriptions of Thirty-Two New Species of Birdsfrom the Hawaiian Islands: Part I. Non-Passeriformes (1991), pp. 1-88
Published by: University of California Press for the American Ornithologists' Union
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40166794 .

Fossil Birds from the Hawaiian Islands: Evidence for
Wholesale Extinction by Man Before Western Contact
STORRS L. OLSON and HELEN F. JAMES
SCIENCE, VOL. 217, 13 AUGUST 1982

Curious though - an amazing selection of birds did reach Hawaii, but this may have been a step too far for pigeons/doves?

Cheers,

Keith
 
Well, I could image that pigeons and doves once occurred in Hawaii, but were hunted and eaten to extinction by the early Polynesians in that way that no fossil material remained. Or the fossil material has been lost by wind, weather, and other natural events. Today there are only introduced doves and pigeons (e.g. on Waikiki)
 
Last edited:
Melanie said:
Well, I could image that pigeons and doves once occurred in Hawaii, but were hunted and eaten to extinction by the early Polynesions in that way that no fossil material remained. Or the fossil material has been lost by wind, weather, and other natural events. Today there are only introduced doves and pigeons (e.g. on Waikiki)
Click to expand...

It's also feasible that any pigeon that did reach the Hawaiian archipelago became flightless, flourishing until introduced predators came on the scene. It was commonplace for any sailors from the 16th century onwards to describe any kind of plump landbird as a 'pigeon'.
MJB
 
Well, it might be also possible that vulcanic activities have prevent that pigeons became widespread on Hawaii. But it could be also feasible that e.g. relatives of the Mourning Dove (Zenaida) could have reached Hawaii million years ago and formed an own species which became extinct maybe before the settlement of the Hawaiian Islands.
 
Given how far Hawaii is out from anything, doves/pigeons might never have dispersed over. The only migratory dove in the US off the top of my head is Mourning, and I think they are largely migratory only in the really cold parts of their range (I know they disappear from Wyoming over the winter, but I see/saw them year round in California and Michigan).

Most of the dispersals to Hawaii seem to have been North American/North Asian in origin. Monarchs I think off the top of my head, and maybe millerbird, are the only old world colonists.

Hawaii has a really good Holocene record, and as far as I know Pigeons/doves generally are well represented in records from Fiji etc. If they were present, I would suspect we would know about them.
 
Ground doves and fruit doves derived from Papuan/Melanesian stock colonized the Pacific as far east as the Marquesas and the Pitcairn Group, but no fossils of columbids have been found in the Hawaiian Islands. No fossils of parrots have been found in the Hawaiian archipelago either, despite their similar success as island colonizers. Like the Pacific columbids, they also colonized Oceania from west to east and were similarly widespread in the Pacific prior to human colonization, apparently reaching as far east as Easter Island, where fossils of two parrot taxa of indeterminate affinities have been found.

The closest columbids are known to have gotten to the Hawaiian Islands was the Marshall Islands, although atoll-adapted species of Alopecoena (Gallicolumba) and Ducula may once have occurred in Kiribati. Parrots apparently didn't get any closer than Pohnpei and the Marquesas. Unlike columbids, parrots are largely restricted to high islands in Oceania, and were absent from the central Pacific atolls.

The ecological role of pigeons and parrots was filled in the Hawaiian Islands by the extinct 'O'u, Psittirostra psittacea, a frugivorous drepanidine finch (Hawaiian honeycreeper). It was remarkably similar in shape and coloration (dark green body and yellow head) to the Whistling Dove Chrysoenas (Ptilinopus) layardi of Fiji.
 
Last edited:
Ali Raza Awan, Emma Umar, Muhammad Zia ul Haq & Sehrish Firyal. Molecular classification of Pakistani collared dove through DNA barcoding. Molecular Biology Reports. November 2013, Volume 40, Issue 11, pp 6329-6331.

Abstract
 
Awan et al 2013

Peter Kovalik said:
Ali Raza Awan, Emma Umar, Muhammad Zia ul Haq & Sehrish Firyal. Molecular classification of Pakistani collared dove through DNA barcoding. Molecular Biology Reports. November 2013, Volume 40, Issue 11, pp 6329-6331. Abstract
Click to expand...
All samples of Pakistani collared dove shared a single clade and found to be the same species that is S. decaocto). Sequences of the Collared dove showed a very close relationship with Streptopelia roseogrisea (African collared dove) (Fig. 1). Furthermore, the phylogenetic tree provided evidence in favor of several classical theories viz; (i) Eurasian doves are close relative to African collared dove, (ii) The Mourning collared dove (Streptopelia decipiens) is not a close relative of the North American Mourning Dove, (Zenaida macroura) rather it is comparatively a close relative to Eurasian-, African- and Pakistani-collared doves, (iii) The Slender-billed Cuckoo-Dove and Brown Cuckoo-Dove belong to same species although some authorities consider it disputed [13].
... Distinct geography of Pakistan might have induced the local doves for their independent evolution. In our study, the alignment of the COI gene sequences of Pakistani dove samples showed lesser intra-species polymorphism than that of inter-species. The finding indicates the taxonomic status of Pakistani collared dove as an independent species or at least as a sister species of Eurasian and African-collareds doves.
Click to expand...
I'm slightly confused by the conclusions concerning Pakistani collared dove. And point (ii) is particularly unsurprising!!!

Re (iii), Macropygia (amboinensis) phasianella is treated as a distinct species by Monroe & Sibley 1993, Baptista et al 1997 (HBW 4), Gibbs et al 2001 (Pigeons & Doves), IOC and eBird/Clements; but not by Christidis & Boles 2008, BirdLife or H&M4.
 
jacana said:
How on earth did this article get through the review process?
Click to expand...

Wow, no kidding, that was horrible. Is Pakistani Collared Dove considered a taxon by anyone, anywhere? I can find no reference to it.

So can I get a quick paper by collecting some Eurasian Collared-Doves here in central Illinois, call it Illini Collared-Dove and describe how it is identical in barcodes to Eurasian Collared-Dove? :-O
 
ntbirdman said:
Wow, no kidding, that was horrible. Is Pakistani Collared Dove considered a taxon by anyone, anywhere? I can find no reference to it.

So can I get a quick paper by collecting some Eurasian Collared-Doves here in central Illinois, call it Illini Collared-Dove and describe how it is identical in barcodes to Eurasian Collared-Dove? :-O
Click to expand...

You certainly could, especially if the barcodes were found not to be identical...!:eek!:
MJB
 

Similar threads

Peter Kovalik
Hummingbird genus Adelomyia
Replies
7
Views
3K
Richard Klim
Richard Klim
Peter Kovalik
Celeus Woodpeckers
Replies
9
Views
5K
Peter Kovalik
Peter Kovalik
Peter Kovalik
Forest Falcons
Replies
3
Views
2K
Peter Kovalik
Peter Kovalik
Richard Klim
Cacatuidae
2
Replies
26
Views
7K
Mike Earp
M
Richard Klim
Platycercine parrots
Replies
7
Views
2K
Richard Klim
Richard Klim

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top