The many-colored fruit dove (''Ptilinopus perousii''), also known as ''manuma'' in the

Samoan language Samoan ( or , ) is a Polynesian languages, Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the Unincorporated territories of the United States, Unit ...

, is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the family

Columbidae Columbidae is a bird Family (biology), family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the Order (biology), order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with small heads, relatively short necks and slender bills that in ...

. It occurs on islands in the south-west

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

where it is found in

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

, the

Samoan Islands The Samoan Islands () are an archipelago covering in the central Pacific Ocean, South Pacific, forming part of Polynesia and of the wider region of Oceania. Political geography, Administratively, the archipelago comprises all of the Samoa, Indep ...

, and

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

is subtropical or tropical moist lowland

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

s. Today, the birds are most often found in

and

. It usually feeds high in the canopy on fruit and berries, especially

banyan A banyan, also spelled banian ( ), is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adjacent prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as ...

fig. The

nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold Egg (biology), eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of ...

is a small platform of twigs where one white

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the ...

is laid.

Description

It is a small dove, in length. Adults weigh in at . The male is mostly pale yellow-white with a red crown and red bar across the back. The female is mostly green, darker on the back and greyer on the head and breast. Her crown is red while the undertail-coverts are red in Samoan birds and yellow in birds from Fiji and Tonga. Male ''Ptilinopus perousii perousii'' is pale on the bottom and yellow on top. There is also a crimson band and corona. The female is said to resemble the purple-capped fruit dove; however, there is no yellow band. They have grey on the bottom while green on top. It only has a crimson corona unlike the male.

Taxonomy

The many-colored fruit dove is in the columbid family with the other doves and pigeons. It a fruit dove meaning it belongs to genus '' Ptilinopus''. However, it is very far from most other doves and has no close relatives due to it being endemic to the South Pacific islands. The two subspecies are ''Ptilinopus perousii mariae'' and ''P. p. perousii''. The ''mariae'' subspecies is found in

and

. Its English name is literal: it is a many-colored dove that eats fruit. The Samoan name ''manuma'' means shy bird and comes from the Samoan words for bird and shame. Their Latin name comes from Captain Jean Francois de Galaup Comte de la Pérouse of the

French navy The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...

, of whom explored the Pacific.

Distribution and habitat

Manuma are found across many islands and archipelagos across

Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...

with a range of 660,000 sq. km. They are most often found in Fiji and Tonga. They can be found in lowland subtropical and tropical broadleaf forests. In these forests, they are found in the canopies. They can also be found in urban areas. The manuma's fossil range is from 0.12 million years ago to today, exclusively in the quaternary.

Behavior

Diet

The many-colored fruit dove is a

frugivore A frugivore ( ) is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance ...

. It forages the canopies of trees in search of figs. On Samoa and American Samoa it is mostly the

. This strict diet keeps the two fig species in check; however, any decline in the amount of figs may be a disaster for the many-colored fruit dove. However, on Fiji and Tonga, manuma are known to eat fruits of ylang ylang (''Cananga odorata''), bishop wood (''Bischofia javanica''), and ('' Trema cannabina'').

Social

Manuma are often found in small flocks. In each flock there are normally more males than females.

Status

While not listed as threatened or endangered by the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

(IUCN), their population is in decline in American Samoa. The justification of the conservation status is that the decline is not extreme enough and the restricted area is not small enough for the vulnerability status. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of this bird were reported on Tutuila, American Samoa. In the 1970s, a population survey found there were around 80 individuals present. In the 1990s, there were 50 individuals on Tutuila reported. Biologists with the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources and workers from Pacific Bird Conservation and the Toledo Zoo captured four many-colored fruit dove to begin a captive breeding project at

Association of Zoos and Aquariums The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), originally the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AAZPA), is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1924 and dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aqu ...

facilities. The many-colored fruit dove chief food source, the banyan fruit, are also in decline due to deforestation and their susceptibility to storm damage. In the 1990s, Cyclone Val and Cyclone Ofa killed or damaged a number of banyan trees, or otherwise stripped them bare of leaves and fruit. Hunting is another cause of the bird's decline on Tutuila. Hunters in search of ''lupe'' ( Pacific imperial pigeon, ''Ducula pacifica'') or ''manutagi'' ( purple-capped fruit-doves, ''Ptilinopus porphyraceus'') may kill many-colored fruit doves instead. In interviews conducted by American Samoa environmental officials, more than a quarter of hunters reported accidentally shooting a many-colored fruit dove.