Paramythia montium alpinum Salomonsen

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 : 117

Paramythia montium alpinum Salomonsen

Paramythia montium alpinum Salomonsen, 1961b: 5 (4 miles east of Wilhelmina Summit, Oranje Range, Snow Mountains, New Guinea: altitude, 3600 meters).

Now Paramythia montium olivacea van Oort, 1910 . See Salomonsen, 1961b: 5–6, Mees, 1964b: 21– 22, Salomonsen, 1967: 201, Dickinson, 2003: 452, Dekker and Quaisser, 2006: 16, and Coates, 2008: 348–349.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 343294 , adult male, collected 4 miles east of Mt. Trikora (5 Wilhelmina) summit, 3600 m, 04.15S, 138.41E (Times Atlas), Oranje Range , Maoke (5 Snow) Mountains, Papua Province, Indonesia, on 29 August 1938, by R. Archbold, A.L. Rand, and W.B. Richardson on the 1938–1939 Archbold New Guinea Expedition (no. 6821).

COMMENTS: Salomonsen gave the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description and gave measurements of eight males and seven females, presumably including the holotype, of his new form from the Ibele (5 Bele, as on label) River, Lake Habbema and Mt. Trikora , from 2200– 4100 m. However , he had many more specimens than those for which he gave measurements ; paratypes are: AMNH 343268– 343277 , AMNH 343279–343281 , AMNH 343283–343293 , AMNH 343295–343300 , AMNH 343302–343310 , AMNH 343313– 343316 . I did not find AMNH 343278 and 343282 in the collection and have no information concerning whether or not they were available to Salomonsen. AMNH 343301 , 343311 , and 343312 were sent to MZB in 1957 and were not available to Salomonsen when he visited AMNH in 1959–1960 .

Salomonsen (1961b: 4) apparently did not refer to the original description of olivacea by van Oort (1910b: 213) , but based his analysis on Junge (1939: 70), where there was an apparent misprint in the wing measurements of the adult male and female of olivacea ( Mees, 1964b: 21–22) , causing him to apply his new name to what he supposed were the larger high-altitude birds. The type series of olivacea actually belongs to the larger highaltitude form, making alpina a synonym of olivacea ( Mees, 1964b: 21–22) and leaving the smaller, lower altitude form without a name, for which Mees (1964b: 22) provided Paramythia montium occidentis (See Dekker and Quaisser, 2006: 16).

Mees (1964b: 19–20) further pointed out that van Oort’s specimens in his original type series of olivacea were from both the Oranje and the Hellwig mountains, and in order to fix the type locality designated the male from the Oranje Mountains as the lectotype of Paramythia montium olivacea (See Dekker and Quaisser, 2006: 16).

Salomonsen (1967: 201, fn.) took issue with Mees’ (1964b: 19–20) discussion; however, because Salomonsen did not work from the original description of olivacea and did not catch the error in Junge’s publication, his subsequent interpretation is flawed.

David and Gosselin (2002: 19, 20) noted that Paramythia is feminine and alpina and olivacea must have feminine endings. Dickinson (2003: 451–452) included Paramythia in the family Melanocharitidae ; Coates (2008: 348–349) treated it in the family Paramythiidae .

The 1938–1939 Archbold Expedition was a joint expedition with the Netherlands East Indies government and is also known as the Indisch-Amerikaansche Expeditie.