COLOR VARIATION OF STREPTOPELIA DECAOCTO ( AVIS , COLUMBIDAE ) WITH SOME NOTES ON ENDOPARASITES

The present paper includes a study of color variation in Iraqi Collared dove Streptopelia decaocto. Three different populations have been recognized: the southern population which belongs to the Indian race, the northern population to the Eurasian race; the dark and light color variation occurs in the Baghdad population because of hybridization between the two races, found infected with two cestodes, Raillietina echinobothrida found in most of our specimens, while the dark face found beside R. echinobothrida infected with Idiogenes sp. getting it probably from vertebrate sources. We believe that most of the Baghdad population was intermediate between north and south races. Reduction of population density of this dove in Baghdad area was caused by diseases, hybridization and competition.

The bird is lilac for head and there is dun-brown narrow black collar encircles the side and back of the neck; the under parts are pinkish -mauve, rather blue on the abdomen; the tail is white below black at the base shoulder is blue-gray (Allouse, 1962).
Palm dove was a rare bird in Iraq, but now it is found all over the country (Lahony et al., 2008); S. orientalis was recorded by Bunni (1988) depending on a single specimen of museum collection; it seems to be vagrant.Long tailed dove Oena capensis distribution range extends to Arabian peninsula, including Kuwait, so its distribution may reach the extreme south of Iraq (south of Basrah).
Collard dove, S. decaocto is one of the most common birds of Iraq, from north to the south.This dove was introduced into Iran and expanded westward to Iraq, Turkey, Balkan and Europe, and it's still spread (Vaurie, 1965).Now its distribution extends to north America.http://dx.doi.org/10.26842/binhm.7.2017.14.4.0267Baicich and Harrison, (1997) said that collard dove could breed many times in the year, and it had smooth white egg 30x23mm, incubation 14-16 day.
Within the past 20 years some color variation appears in collared dove of Baghdad population, in this study we discuss the variation in Iraqi collared dove and give some notes on endoparasites.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Seven bird specimens were collected from Baghdad, middle of Iraq; 4 were from the south, Diwaniyah province and 2 from the North of Iraq, Kurdistan region, Sulaymaniyah province for a systematic study and were immediately checked for their endoparasites, in addition to 4 specimens of the collection of the Iraq Natural History Research Center and Museum, University of Baghdad were used for comparisons.Cestodes were identified according to Wardle and Mcleod (1952).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
We divided the collared dove population of Iraq, according to the coloration into three main regions.
The North population: has light dorsal and ventral color.Baghdad province: the population has two types of coloration, one with light dorsal and ventral, and the other one with dark dorsal and nearly black ventral.The South population is smaller in size and little darker than that of northern population.Table (1) gives the variation within the different populations.
Most of our specimens found infected with the cestode Raillataena echinobothrida and some of the dark face of the Baghdad population was infected with Idiogena sp.found beside to R. echinobothrida.The collared dove Streptopelia decaocto distributed all over the world, there is no marked variation between the different populations except for S.d.intercedens from India (Vaurie, 1965).In our collection of the Diwaniyah, south of Iraq, they have a wing length of 16.5-17.5cm.and dorsal color little darker than that of the north; its description is given by Vaurie (1965) for Indian race, so it must be S. d. intercedens.
The prominent color variation will be seen in the Baghdad population, about a quarter of the Baghdad population has a dark dorsal with nearly black breast and ventral side and a gradation in the color, some are black and other with lighter coloration and the measurement of wing is between 17-18cm; this is found in the northern and southern population.
There is no identical color variation in any part of the world, White (2007) mentioned for breeding between domestic white ring neck dove and Eurasian collared dove; the result was white ringed, she said this new hybrid couldn't survive in the field.We believed that this was intermediate between northern and southern subspecies, this agrees with Mayr (1969).
It has an amazing parasite infection, beside of cestodes Raillietina echinobothrida, which is a common parasite of the Iraqi dove; it was isolated from the rock dove Columba livia (Al-Shaibany, 2008 andAl-Saffar, 2009), and found in the house sparrow, Passer domesticus biblicus (Mohammad and Al-Moussawi, 2013).We found that some of the dark face collared dove was infected also with the intestinal cestode Idiogenes sp.; this parasite is mostly found in birds of prey as goshawk, buzzards and sparrow hawk, all are carnivores and maybe our dark dove got infection by feeding on a vertebrate diet of rubbish and garbage, for instance some dead and decomposed rodent or birds beside its normal diet.There is no difference in behavior and reproduction if compared with other population.
The northern population color and measurements is the same as Eurasian population Streptopelia decaocto decaocto (Pl.1).
There are probabilities for this color variation : 1-Hybrids, but hybrid do not exist in the field, return back to the normal color.2-Intermediate subspecies between northern and southern races.
The hybrid does not exist in the fields, return to the normal color or die (Mayr, 1969 ).We feel that in Iraq, the reduction in population density is a realits because of hybrid and also because of the impact of computation with recently distributed Streptopelia senegalensis, always we found dead collared dove in the gardens and also in the fields (Pl.2).Mayr (1969) described this phenomena, and he said that intermediate subspecies in a narrow line occur between two different population, recognized by the gradation of the color and measurement some as (A) population and other as (B) population.3-Effect of diseases and parasite infection.4-They are exposed to some source of radiation.We believe that the 2 nd and 3 rd are most likely to be in the same line.