Corvus brachyurus A.E. Brehm

Lecroy, Mary, 2014, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 12. Passeriformes: Ploceidae, Sturnidae, Buphagidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, Callaeidae, Grallinidae, Corcoracidae, Artamidae, Cracticidae, Ptilonorhynchidae, Cnemophilidae, Paradisaeidae, And Corvidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2014 (393), pp. 1-165 : 135-136

Corvus brachyurus A.E. Brehm

Corvus brachyurus A.E. Brehm, 1854: 75 (Aegypten) .

Now Corvus rhipidurus Hartert, 1918 . See Hartert and Kleinschmidt, 1901: 41; Hartert, 1918a: 7; 1918b: 361; 1918e: 21; Blake and Vaurie, 1962: 281; Dickinson, 2003: 515; and dos Anjos, 2009: 639–640.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 675393 , adult male, collected at Luxor, 25.41N, 32.24E (Times Atlas), Egypt, on 12 October 1851, by Alfred E. Brehm. From the Brehm Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, A.E. Brehm noted that he collected a single specimen. It bears in addition to Rothschild Collection and type labels, C.L. Brehm’s original label where it is called ‘‘ Corax brachyuros, species distincta,’’ in C.L. Brehm’s hand. Hartert (1918a: 7) incorrectly cited the date of collection of the type as ‘‘1857,’’ and considered the same specimen to be the type of Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L. Brehm, 1855 , which name he thought was a slip of the pen for brachyurus . He considered both of these names synonyms of Corvus affinis Rüppell, 1835 .

Hartert (1918b: 361) then considered C. brachyrhynchos C.L. Brehm, 1855 , a valid name and the one to be used because C. affinis was found to be preoccupied by C. affinis Shaw, 1809 (= Monasa nigra ), and C. brachyurus A.E. Brehm was preoccupied by C. brachyurus Linnaeus, 1766 . However, it does seem that C. brachyrhynchos C.L. Brehm, 1855 , was indeed a slip of the pen and not intended as a new name, because Brehm (1855a: 414) credited the name to Alfred Brehm.

Hartert (1918e: 21) then found that C. brachyrhynchus C.L. Brehm, 1855 (so spelled by Hartert) was preoccupied by C. brachyrhynchus C.L. Brehm, 1822 , and at that point decided that a replacement name was needed! He provided Corvus rhipidurus , and this has been used by subsequent authors.