Pachycephala melanonota Hartert

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 34

Pachycephala melanonota Hartert

Pachycephala melanonota Hartert, 1908: 106 (Vella Lavella I., Central Group of the Solomon Islands).

Now Pachycephala orioloides melanonota Hartert, 1908 . See Galbraith, 1956: 197, Mayr and Diamond, 2001: 395, Dickinson, 2003: 477, and Boles, 2007: 421.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 658153 , adult male, collected on Vella Lavella Island , 07.45S, 156.40E ( USBGN, 1974), Solomon Islands, on 23 February 1908, by collectors for A.S. Meek (no. 3834). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert cited Meek’s unique field number of the holotype in the original description; Rothschild and Hartert (1908: 358) listed the specimens in Meek’s collection, giving his field numbers. The following seven specimens are paratypes: AMNH 658154 (Meek no. 3897), male ; AMNH 658155 (3846), male ; AMNH 658156 (3896), sexed as a male but considered a female juv. by Rothschild and Hartert ; AMNH 658157 (3946), male ; AMNH 658158 (3964), female ; AMNH 658159 (3953), sexed as a female but considered a male juv. by Rothschild and Hartert ; and AMNH 658160 (3765), female. Rothschild and Hartert (1908: pl. 13) illustrated the adult male of melanonota .

Galbraith (1956: 197), Mayr and Diamond (2001: 395), and Boles (2007: 421) considered melanonota a subspecies of P. pectoralis ; Dickinson (2003: 477) included melanonota in a Solomon Islands species, P. orioloides , in the pectoralis complex.