In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the claret-breasted fruit dove in his six volume Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on Ambon Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. He used the French name La tourterelle verte d'Amboine and the Latin Turtur viridis amboinensis.[3] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.[4] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.[4] One of these was the claret-breasted fruit dove which he placed with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial nameColumba viridis and cited Brisson's work.[5] The specific nameviridis is the Latin word for "green".[6] This fruit dove is now placed in the genusPtilinopus that was introduced in 1825 by the English naturalist William John Swainson.[7][8]
The claret-breasted fruit dove is 20–21 cm (7.9–8.3 in) in length. The plumage is mainly green apart from a well-defined patch of dark red-brown feathers on the throat and upper breast. The face and forecrown are bluish grey and shoulder has a bluish grey patch.[9]
^ abAllen, J.A. (1910). "Collation of Brisson's genera of birds with those of Linnaeus". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 28: 317–335. hdl:2246/678.
^ abGill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (2020). "Pigeons". IOC World Bird List Version 10.1. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 14 March 2020.