The tangled nomenclatural history of Haplopelia forbesi Salvadori, 1904: were Forbes and Robinson right all along?

Abstract

The specimen in Liverpool known as Forbes' Lemon Dove, collected pre-1844 purportedly in Cayenne (French Guiana), was catalogued by Forbes & Robinson in 1900 as Haplopelia principalis, despite this species having been described from the island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea. As a result of the discrepancy in localities, the Liverpool specimen was subsequently described as a new species (Haplopelia forbesi) by Salvadori and suggested to be from West Africa. Over the course of the next century, the new taxon was subject to a variety of taxonomic treatments. To investigate the status and provenance of Forbes' Lemon Dove, we obtained a 472 bp cyt-b sequence from the specimen. This possessed 100% similarity with a Lemon Dove Columba (Aplopelia) larvata sequence from Príncipe and 99.79% similarity with a sequence of the same species from São Tomé. This suggests that Forbes & Robinson were correct that the specimen represents A. larvata principalis and was thus probably collected on Príncipe. However, more sequencing from across the Lemon Dove's range is required to resolve the taxonomy of this complex group and place Forbes' Lemon Dove more definitively.