Alopecoenas stairi
The shy ground dove, also known as the Tongan ground dove or friendly ground dove, is a species of bird in the family Columbidae. It is found in American Samoa, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Wallis and Futuna Islands. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. It is threatened by habitat loss.

Joseph Wolf · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- shy ground-dovePBDB
- Sits inside
- AlopecoenasPBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, granivorePBDB, for Columbidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Columbidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Columbidae
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
10 occurrences of Alopecoenas stairi on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
10 occurrences- Pleistocene28%
- Holocene72%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Alopecoenas stairi and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Alopecoenas stairi and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
97 taxa- Didunculus placopedetes6 sites
- Megapodius alimentum6 sites
- Ducula pacifica5 sites
- Eclectus infectus5 sites
- Megapodius5 sites
- Columbidae4 sites
- Gallus gallus4 sites
- Megapodius pritchardii4 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus4 sites
- Aplonis tabuensis3 sites
- Ardenna pacifica3 sites
- Cacomantis flabelliformis3 sites
- Ducula3 sites
- Ducula david3 sites
- Ducula shutleri3 sites
- Foulehaio carunculatus3 sites
- Gallirallus vekamatolu3 sites
- Lalage maculosa3 sites
- Megapodiidae3 sites
- Todiramphus chloris3 sites
- Turdus poliocephalus3 sites
- Accipiter efficax2 sites
- Accipiter fasciatus2 sites
- Accipiter haplochrous2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Alopecoenas stairi, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- Prehistoric avifaunas from the Kingdom of Tonga3
- Faunal extinction and human habitation in New Caledonia: initial results and implications of new research at the Pindai Caves3
- Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact3
- Bird bones from the To’aga site: prehistoric loss of seabirds and megapodes1
Each of the 10 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Alopecoenas stairi
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Joseph Wolf
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alopecoenas stairi was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAlopecoenas through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gray 1856)