Critically Endangered
Negros Fruit Dove
Ptilinopus arcanus
Negros Fruit Dove is a pigeon in the family Columbidae (order Columbiformes) — Ptilinopus arcanus, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to Philippines.
Appearance
The female is a vivid dark green overall with an ash-grey forehead above an extensive ring of bare yellow skin that surrounds the eye. The greater coverts and tertial feathers have broad yellow fringes that create a narrow, if conspicuous, wingbar when the wing is folded. The throat is white while the vent and undertail coverts are yellow.
The fruit dove is 16.5 cm (6.5 in) long.
Range and habitat
The Negros fruit dove is believed to be endemic to the island of Negros in the central part of the Philippines. Even so, some hope exists that the bird may persist undetected on a nearby island. The only known birds were collected from a forest at the edge of a clearing on Mount Kanlaon at an elevation of about 1,100 m (3,600 ft).
It is endemic to the island of Negros in the Philippines. This fruit dove is known from a single female specimen collected from the slopes of Mount Kanlaon in the northern part of the island.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The original specimen was shot along with a bird suspected to be its mate from a fruiting tree.
In crisis
The species has not been definitively reported since its original discovery in 1953, and as several searches of Mount Kanlaon and the surrounding forests have not discovered any sign of the bird, many believe that it may be extinct. As such, it is currently listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Any surviving population would be very small, likely numbering fewer than 50 individuals, and would be threatened by habitat destruction and hunting.
Even so, a local hunter in southern Negros claimed to have shot it in the nineties, that has given hope that the species may still exist, and as such the IUCN lists the Negros fruit dove as Critically Endangered, as any surviving population is likely to number fewer than 50 birds. If the species still exists, it is likely that habitat destruction for agriculture, timber, and charcoal-burning and hunting, a common problem for all other pigeons on Negros, are major threats.
Negros Fruit Dove is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Negros Fruit Dove, Wikidata item Q338746. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
