Red-Moustached Fruit-Dove (Ptilinopus mercierii)

Year Last Seen:

1922

Comments:

This species was found in the Marquesas, French Polynesia, but it is now Extinct due to the action of introduced predators. The last record was of the subspecies tristrami on Hiva Oa, in 1922.

Habitat:

Its ecology is likely to have been similar to other members of the genus Ptilinopus.

Causes:

Its extinction has been attributed to predation by the introduced Great Horned Owl Bubo virginianus (Holyoak and Thibault 1984), but introduced rats and cats are more likely (Collar et al. 1994, Hume 2017).

Distribution:

Ptilinopus mercierii was endemic to the Marquesas, French Polynesia, with the nominate subspecies on Nuku Hiva and subspecies tristrami on Hiva Oa. While the former is known from a single specimen collected in 1849 in the Valley of Mohana, Nuka Hiva (Hume 2017), the latter is known from at least 11 specimens, the last collected by the Whitney Expedition in 1922 (Holyoak and Thibault 1984). The species was reported on Hiva Oa in 1980 (Hay 1986), but this was probably a mistake (Collar et al. 1994).

References:

IUCN Redbook Data