Zenaida doves

Zenaida Doves
File:Mourning Dove Image 002.jpg
Mourning dove (Zenaida macroura)
File:Zenaida macroura vocalizations - pone.0027052.s009.oga
Call of a mourning dove
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Columbiformes
Family:	Columbidae
Subfamily:	Columbinae
Genus:	Zenaida Bonaparte, 1838
Species
See text.

The zenaida doves (Zenaida) make up a small genus of American doves. There are 7 species:

• White-winged dove, Zenaida asiatica
• West Peruvian dove, Zenaida meloda
• Zenaida dove, Zenaida aurita
• Galápagos dove, Zenaida galapagoensis
• Eared dove, Zenaida auriculata
• Mourning dove, Zenaida macroura
• Socorro dove, Zenaida graysoni (extinct in the wild)

DNA sequence analysis confirms that the white-winged and west Peruvian doves are the most distinct and that they should be treated as good species. Relationships among the other species are quite unequivocal too; what is not quite clear is whether the Galapagos dove is most closely related to the zenaida dove (as tentatively indicated by morphology) or to the eared and mourning doves (as suggested by DNA sequences — although with a very low confidence level – and, most robustly, biogeography). The name of this genus commemorates Zénaïde Laetitia Julie Bonaparte, wife of the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte and niece of Napoleon Bonaparte.