Melipotes ater Rothschild and Hartert

Mary, 2011, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 9. Passeriformes: Zosteropidae And Meliphagidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (348), pp. 1-193 : 137

Melipotes ater Rothschild and Hartert

Melipotes ater Rothschild and Hartert, 1911b: 13 (Rawlinson Mountains, north of Huon Gulf, German New Guinea).

Now Melipotes ater Rothschild and Hartert, 1911 . See Coates, 1990: 266, and Higgins et al., 2008: 632.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 696356 , [adult male], collected in the Rawlinson Mountains , 06.30S, 147.15E (PNG, 1984), Huon Peninsula, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea, in November 1910, by Christian Keysser. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Rothschild and Hartert described both the adult male and the adult female and said that the type was in the Rothschild Museum but did not actually designate a particular specimen as type. Hartert (1919a: 175) later listed the supposed male as the type, thereby designating it the lectotype and calling attention to the large difference in wing measurements between presumed male and female; he incorrectly said it was collected in 1911. AMNH 696356 bears the Rothschild type label on which the sex is marked ‘‘s’’ ; it has a wing that I measure as 163mm. The second specimen in the Rothschild Collection at that time, AMNH 696358 , was also not sexed, but is marked ‘‘ ♀ ’’ and has a wing measuring 142 (left wing) ; it is the paralectotype. These are the only two specimens that Rothschild had when the description was published on 1 November 1911. They do not have original labels, but both are marked as having been collected (or obtained?) in ‘‘ XI.1910 ’’ and were bought from Professor Foerster. Hartert (1919a: 175) mentioned that there were ‘‘now two females and one male’’ in the Rothschild Collection. The second female specimen is also in AMNH but was not part of the type series. It has Keysser’s original label, was collected in September 1911, is labeled ‘‘ Melipotes ater R&H,’’ and is sexed as a female .

The Rothschild type label has the notation, ‘‘fig. Nov. Zool. 21 (1919)’’; however, the volume of Novitates Zoologicae for 1919 is 26 (see Hartert 1919b: 358, pl. 6, upper fig.).