On 30 September 1796, Commander Nicolas-Thomas Baudin (1754–1803) and, among others, the naturalist René Maugé (1757–1802), sailed from La Havre, France, bound for the Caribbean. Due to problems with the ship, they docked at Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, on 6 November 1796, and remained there until 15 March 1797 (Jansen & Fuchs 2019). During this time they collected specimens in the vicinity of Puerto de la Cruz (Ledru 1810).

One of the expedition's goals was to collect natural history objects in the Caribbean, and following their return on 7 June 1798 (Jangoux 2009) these specimens were deposited in what is now the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France (MNHN). A specimen collected on Tenerife by Maugé of what subsequently proved to be Bolle's Laurel Pigeon Columba bollii Godman, 1872, was however labelled as being from Puerto Rico. As a result of the erroneous locality data, the specimen (MNHN-ZO-2002-534; Fig. 1), still at MNHN, was incorrectly identified as a Ring-tailed Pigeon Patagioenas caribaea (Jacquin, 1784), which species is endemic to Jamaica. The confusion has led to doubts in the literature as to whether Ring-tailed Pigeon formerly occurred in Puerto Rico (e.g., Peters 1937: 66, del Hoyo & Collar 2014: 168), although Hellmayr & Conover (1942: 442) had mentioned that the species' inclusion in the avifauna of Puerto Rico rested solely on Maugé's specimen, noting that ‘It is a well-known fact, however, that the collections of that naturalist were mixed up in the Paris Museum, and an error in labelling this particular specimen is very likely to have been made.’ None of these authors appears to have examined the specimen; they would surely have noticed that it is not a Ring-tailed Pigeon and would perhaps have concluded that it was collected in either the vicinity of Puerto de la Cruz or La Orotava, the two localities visited by Maugé on Tenerife.

Together with Pauline Knip de Courcelles (1781–1851), the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778–1858), published the first monograph on pigeons (Temminck & Knip 1808). Knip executed the plates for this major work, mainly based on specimens in Temminck's own collection and others at MNHN. The specimen used to model for Ring-tailed Pigeon (see Fig. 2) was the specimen collected by Maugé on Tenerife of the as yet unnamed Columba bollii. Temminck provided a good description of the same specimen, which is therefore the first description of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon. As he believed it was collected on Puerto Rico, he called it ‘Colombe a queue annelée’ based on Sloane’s Ring-tailed Pigeon (see Appendix) and used the scientific name Columba caribaea supposedly of Latham. In fact, Latham (1790: 603) mentioned a variety of caribaea with a wedge-shaped tail, as reported by Jacquin (1784: 30) in his somewhat inaccurate original description of caribaea (see Appendix); Latham was thus merely reporting Jacquin. Temminck remarked that Latham’s variety (with the wedge-shaped tail) must be a different species, as the tail of the specimen used by him and Knip was square-ended (Temminck & Knip 1808: 22, pl. 10).

Figure 1.

Specimen of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon Columba bollii, and the holotype of Columba Lamprauchen Wagler, 1827, collected by Maugé sometime between November 1796 and March 1797 on Tenerife, MNHN-ZO-2002-534; the specimen was wrongly labelled as being from Puerto Rico and until recently misidentified as Ring-tailed Pigeon Patagioenas caribaea but, as its characteristics obviously do not agree with that species, Wagler believed this was a new species from Puerto Rico that he named Columba Lamprauchen (© Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris)

The German zoologist Johann Georg Wagler (1800–32) was familiar with Temminck's work and apparently had seen Maugé's specimen in Paris. He noted that the descriptions of the latter specimen did not match Columba caribaea and insisted that further examination was required before considering them the same species. He specifically noted that he had not seen Latham's wedge-tailed variety but, in accord with Temminck, he thought the latter represented a different species (Wagler 1827: 244). Wagler too was led to believe that the specimen came from the Caribbean and, as this form had not previously been described, he named it Columba Lamprauchen, of which Maugé's specimen of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon from Tenerife (Fig. 1) is the holotype. This name, however, was never connected with Columba bollii Godman, 1872, by later workers as the specimen was believed to be from Puerto Rico. Nobody after Wagler appeared to take a close look at it, so for almost 200 years Maugé's specimen remained incorrectly identified as Patagioenas caribaea (Voisin et al. 2005: 845, Jansen & Fuchs 2019).

Figure 2.

Plate 10, Ring-tailed Pigeon Columba caribea [sic], in Temminck & Knip (1808). The specimen that modelled for this plate is a Bolle's Laurel Pigeon C. bollii collected by Maugé, and this was the first illustration of the Canarian species more than 60 years before its formal description (Hein van Grouw, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Which laurel pigeon is which?

Two endemic and very similar-looking laurel pigeon species occur on the Canary Islands: Laurel Pigeon Columba junoniae E. Hartert, 1916, and Bolle's Laurel Pigeon C. bollii Godman, 1872. A third, also similar species is endemic to Madeira, Madeira Laurel Pigeon C. trocaz Heineken, 1829. Due to their similarity they have been confused in the past and for many years only two species were recognised. For example, Webb & Berthelot (1841) thought that C. trocaz also occurred in the Canaries and renamed it Columba laurivora, as, in their opinion, trocaz was not a ‘Latin name’. The description and accompanying plate (Webb & Berthelot 1841: pl. 3, top; see Fig. 3) is of a ‘male’ Madeira Laurel Pigeon. They added that the ‘female’ differed slightly from the male, but their description and plate of the ‘female’ (Webb & Berthelot 1841: pl. 3, bottom; see Fig. 4) match the then unnamed C. junoniae from the Canaries. As the name laurivora was based on the description and the plate of the male, it necessarily applies to the Madeira species, and laurivora is nowadays considered a junior synonym of trocaz. Nevertheless, the name C. laurivora was universally used for the laurel pigeon of the Canaries instead, even though it is now known not to be applicable to this species. Hartert (1916: 85–86) recognised this and named the Canarian species C. junoniae, after the old names for the islands of La Palma and Gomera; Junonia Mayor and Junonia Menor.

Partially as a result of Webb & Berthelot's mistake, Bonaparte (1857) confused matters even further. He realised that Webb & Berthelot (1841) had depicted two different species. The ‘female’ in Webb & Berthelot (1841: pl. 3, bottom) was indeed correctly identified to species but, in Bonaparte’s opinion, was a ‘male’. He therefore figured a ‘female’ (of junoniae) (Bonaparte 1857: pl. 69; see Fig. 5) under Webb & Berthelot’s name laurivora (in fact, the species cannot be sexed using plumage). However, Bonaparte (1857) thought that the male illustrated by Webb & Berthelot (1841: pl. 3, top) was the male of a new species, which he thought occurred on both Madeira and the Canaries, as well as in Morocco, and which he had previously named Trocaza bouvryi (Bonaparte 1855: 658–659). Unaware that his ‘new species’ was, in fact, Heineken’s trocaz from Madeira, he depicted a Madeira Laurel Pigeon under the name bouvryi (Bonaparte 1857: pl. 70; see Fig. 6).

Thus, in contrast to Webb & Berthelot (1841) who believed only one species of laurel pigeon (laurivora = trocaz) occurred on Madeira and the Canaries, Bonaparte (1857) recognised two species (laurivora = junoniae and bouvryi = trocaz) but thought both occurred in both archipelagos. By this point, Bolle's Laurel Pigeon had not been recognised as a third species, probably because it is very similar in appearance to Madeira Laurel Pigeon, most notably in the pale central tail-band (see Fig. 7), which surely explains why the latter was long believed to occur on Madeira and the Canaries. The tail of C. junoniae is very distinctively white at the tip, hence its other common name White-tailed Pigeon.

It was the German ornithologist Carl August Bolle (1821–1909), who had spent much time on the Canary Islands, that mentioned a potential third species of laurel pigeon. Although he had not seen it himself, he was told by local people that it was ‘a smaller species’ (Bolle 1858: 329). The English ornithologist and collector Frederick DuCane Godman (1834–1919) was first to confirm the third species, based on specimens he had procured on the Canaries (Godman 1872; Figs. 8–9). He named the species C. bollii, in honour of Bolle who, however, never did see a specimen. He might have named it after Wagler instead, as the latter had noticed that the specimen collected by Maugé differed from Ring-tailed Pigeon C. caribaea Jacquin, 1784, of which fact Godman seemed unaware.

Figure 3.

Plate 3, top, male of Columba laurivora in Webb & Berthelot (1841), which according to them occurred on Madeira and the Canaries; the illustration matches Columba trocaz from Madeira (Hein van Grouw, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Figure 4.

Plate 3, bottom, female of Columba laurivora in Webb & Berthelot (1841), which according to them occurred on Madeira and the Canaries; the illustration matches Columba junoniae from the Canaries (Hein van Grouw, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Figure 5.

Plate 69, female of Trocaza laurivora in Bonaparte (1857), which according to Bonaparte occurred on Madeira and the Canaries; the illustration matches Columba junoniae from the Canaries (Hein van Grouw, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Figure 6.

Plate 70, male of Trocaza bouvryi in Bonaparte (1857), which according to Bonaparte was a new species that occurred on Madeira and the Canaries and in Morocco; the illustration matches Columba trocaz from Madeira (Hein van Grouw © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Figure 7.

Tails, from above (top) and below, and left to right, of Ring-tailed Pigeon Patagioenas caribaea, Bolle's Laurel Pigeon Columba bollii, Laurel Pigeon C. junoniae and Madeira Laurel Pigeon C. trocaz (Jonathan Jackson, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Conclusion

The name Columba Lamprauchen Wagler, 1827, was applied to a specimen of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon collected by Maugé on Tenerife, and is the senior name for this taxon. This name, however, has never been used for the Canarian species as it was always associated (erroneously) with a Caribbean species.

In principle the valid name of a taxon is the oldest available, unless, for example, its use would upset a long-accepted junior name, as articulated in Art. 23.2 of the International code of zoological nomenclature (ICZN 1999). In the case of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon, use of the junior synonym bollii is required to maintain stability and avoid confusion, but the Code dictates two conditions. Firstly, that the senior name has not been used as the valid name for the taxon post-1899 (Art. 23.9.1.1) and, secondly, the junior name has been used as the presumed valid name for the taxon in the last 50 years by at least ten different authors in at least 25 different works (Art. 23.9.1.2).

We have found several publications, all prior 1899, that cited the name lamprauchen, but only in the synonymy of C. caribaea, or in relation to an alleged species from Puerto Rico. Gosse (1847: 291) mentioned ‘Columba lamprauchen WAGL.' as a synonym of ‘Ring-tail pigeon Columba Caribaea LINN.'¹ from Jamaica. Hartlaub (1849) thought that Wagler's Columba lamprauchen was Temminck's (1807: 142, 248) ‘Le Ramier blue à nuque écaillée’ = Scaly-naped Pigeon Patagioenas squamosa (Bonnaterre, 1792), of which Temminck had a specimen from Trinidad, perhaps because Temminck (in Temminck & Knip 1808) later named the same species (‘Colombe à nuque écaillée’) Columba portoricensis and referred to specimens taken by Maugé in Puerto Rico. Another mention of Columba lamprauchen is by Bonaparte (1854: 1110) who believed it to be a synonym of ‘Col. caribaea, L.' from the Antilles and the Bahamas. Burmeister (1856: 294) considered lamprauchen was the name of a pigeon species allegedly from Puerto Rico. In the synonymy, Burmeister mentioned ‘Columba caribaea, plate 10’ in Temminck & Knip 1808. Reichenbach (1851: index page [1]) mentioned C. lamprauchen Wagl. as a synonym of Columba caribaea plate 10 of Temminck. He also copied Temminck’s plate 10 to illustrate Ring-tailed Pigeon, although the bird depicted was a Bolle’s Pigeon (Fig. 10), as discussed above. About a decade later, Reichenbach (1861–62) erected the genus Patagioenas including the Ring-tailed Pigeon Patagioenas caribaea, referring to Temminck’s Columba caribaea and again mentioned Columba lamprauchen in the synonymy. The latest mention of Wagler’s Columba lamprauchen we found was by Gundlach (1878: 346), also in the synonymy of Columba caribaea Temminck (Temminck & Knip 1808: 22, pl. 10, Temminck 1813: 114), but he doubted that the species occurred on Puerto Rico. No use of Wagler’s name lamprauchen is found in works post-1899.

Figure 8

(left). Syntype of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon Columba bollii Godman, 1872, NHMUK 1889.2.12.84; nine specimens were used for the original description, five of which are at NHMUK, one is in Manchester Museum (see Fig. 9) and one is in the Naturhistorischen Museums Wien, NMW 53.045 (Schifter et al. 2007: 151), but the whereabouts of the other two are currently unknown (Jonathan Jackson, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Figure 9.

Plate 459 in Dresser (1875) of Bolle's Laurel Pigeon Columba bollii, based on a specimen collected by Godman on Tenerife in 1871 and donated to Henry Dresser; it is one of nine syntypes and is held in Manchester Museum, BD09098 (Hein van Grouw, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

Figure 10.

Plate 230b, fig. no. 3362, Patagioenas caribaea, synonym Columba lamprauchen, in Reichenbach 1851; clearly a copy of plate 10 in Temminck & Knip (1808) and thus not Patagioenas caribaea but rather the then unnamed Columba bollii (Hein van Grouw, © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)

To satisfy Art. 23.9.1.2, the following list of 25 works use the junior synonym bollii as the valid name: Löhrl (1981), Goodwin (1983), Huizinga (1984), Cramp (1985), Emmerson et al. (1986), Martín (1987), Sibley & Monroe (1990), Gonzalez (1995), Uhlig & Uhlig (1996), Baptista et al. (1997), Beaman & Madge (1998), Snow & Perrins (1998), Hernández et al. (1999), Gibbs et al. (2001), Martín & Lorenzo (2001), Martí & del Moral (2003), Clarke (2006), Lorenzo (2007), Schifter et al. (2007), García-del-Rey (2011), Dickinson & Remsen (2013), Padrón (2013), del Hoyo & Collar (2014), García-del-Rey (2015) and García-del-Rey (2018).

Based on the above, and to the best of our knowledge, the senior name lamprauchen is never used as a valid name for Bolle's Pigeon from Tenerife, and in our opinion the condition in Art. 23.9.1.1 of the International code of zoological nomenclature (ICZN 1999) is met. Furthermore, the list of 25 works mentioned above demonstrates that the junior name bollii has been used for the last 50 years as the valid name for Bolle's Pigeon from Tenerife, satisfying Art. 23.9.1.2. Therefore, the junior name, Columba bollii Godman, 1872, is valid, in accordance with Art. 23.9.2. As a result, Columba bollii Godman, 1872, becomes a nomen protectum, and Columba Lamprauchen Wagler, 1827, a nomen oblitum.