Myzomela obscura meeki 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 : 60

Myzomela obscura meeki Rothschild and Hartert

Myzomela obscura meeki Rothschild and Hartert, 1907: 479 (Upper Aroa River).

Now Myzomela obscura fumata ( Bonaparte, 1850) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 352, Coates, 1990: 240– 241, and Higgins et al., 2008: 638–639.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 692590 , female, collected on the Aroa River , Central Province, Papua New Guinea, on 6 February 1905, by Albert S. Meek (no. B.208). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Rothschild and Hartert gave Meek’s unique field number of the holotype in the original description and said that they had three males and two females, including the type. The paratypes, all labeled Aroa River, are: males, AMNH 692587 (Meek no. B.71), 30 November 1904, AMNH 692588 (B.59), 27 November 1904, and AMNH 692589 (B.64), 28 November ; female, AMNH 692591 (B.122), 31 December 1904

On this, Meek’s second trip to the Aroa River, he himself camped at high altitudes ( Rothschild and Jordan, 1905: 448–454). Most of the specimens from high altitudes have field numbers beginning with ‘‘A.’’ The ones beginning with ‘‘B,’’ and usually said by Rothschild and Hartert (1907) to be from the Upper Aroa River, are actually only labeled ‘‘Aroa River’’ in a hand that is not Meek’s. Rothschild and Jordan (1905: 449) quote a letter from Meek: ‘‘I am also taking a new assistant, though I have as yet my doubts whether he will be of much good to me.’’ And later (p. 450) ‘‘A white man, a prospector, accompanied me to the Aroa River, where I had to leave him. He seemed too scared of the natives to bring him along to places where there is a chance of the natives being bad.’’ The ‘‘B’’ specimens always seem to be lowland or hill forms and collected on dates that Meek was himself in the mountains. So it seems possible that the ‘‘new assistant’’ remained in the lowlands and collected birds. Meek, on this trip, was collecting mainly lepidoptera.