Melirrhophetes belfordi griseirostris 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 : 133-134

Melirrhophetes belfordi griseirostris Rothschild and Hartert

Melirrhophetes belfordi griseirostris Rothschild and Hartert, 1911c: 34 (Mt. Goliath, Central Dutch New Guinea).

Now Melidectes belfordi griseirostris (Rothschild and Hartert, 1911) . See Gilliard, 1959, Diamond, 1967: 9–12, Salomonsen, 1967: 418, Dickinson, 2003: 438, and Higgins et al., 2008: 613.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 693819 , male, collected on Mount Goliath , 04.40S, 139.52E ( USBGN, 1982a), Papua Province, Indonesia, on 11 February 1911, by Albert S. Meek (no. 5353). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Meek’s unique field number of the holotype was cited in the original description. Rothschild and Hartert (1913: 514–515) reported on Meek’s Mount Goliath collection and noted that they had six males and four females, giving Meek’s numbers for each. The nine paratypes, all collected in January and February 1911, are: AMNH 693817 (Meek no. 5222), AMNH 693818 (5148), AMNH 693820 (5298), AMNH 693821 (5093), AMNH 693822 (5354), AMNH 693823 (5161), males (as sexed by Meek) ; AMNH 693824 (5455), AMNH 693825 (5325), AMNH 693826 (5248), females (as sexed by Meek) .

Dickinson (2003: 438) and Higgins et al. (2008: 613) did not recognize griseirostris, considering it a hybrid form. However, this population is a stable population of hybrid origin, all specimens showing the same characters, not a ‘‘hybrid swarm,’’ a population of individuals showing a mixture of traits possessed by the supposed parental forms ( Gilliard, 1959: 24).