Zosterops superciliaris 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 : 37-38

Zosterops superciliaris Hartert

Zosterops superciliaris Hartert, 1897b: 172 (South Flores).

Now Lophozosterops superciliaris superciliaris (Hartert, 1897) . See Mees, 1969: 196–198, White and Bruce, 1986: 418, and van Balen, 2008: 482.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 701420 , female, collected in southern Flores, above 3000 ft, in October 1896, by J.M. Dumas for Alfred Everett. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert did not designate a type in the original description or give the size of his type series. Later, reporting on Everett’s entire collection, he ( Hartert, 1897d: 520) again did not mention a type or the number of specimens, only saying that he had a series. Hartert (1920: 437) listed as the type a female with the data given above for the lectotype. There are, however, two such specimens. AMNH 701420 bears a Rothschild type label, and on Everett’s field label on the same specimen Hartert has written ‘‘Type of species’’; this specimen was his intended type and was so cataloged when the Rothschild Collection came to AMNH. In order to formalize Hartert’s intent and prevent misinterpretation of the older literature, I hereby designate AMNH 701420 the lectotype of Zosterops superciliaris . Paralectotypes in AMNH, all collected in southern Flores in 1896 by Everett’s collectors, are: males, AMNH 701417, 701418, November, 3500 ft; AMNH 701419, October, 3300 ft; females, AMNH 701421, October, above 3000 ft, AMNH 701422, November, 3500 ft.

Typification of this taxon offers an example of why it is important to make sure that the appropriate specimen is chosen as the type. All types of forms named by Rothschild and/or Hartert were in the Rothschild Collection unless stated otherwise by them, and Hartert’s various lists of types were intended to make certain that such types were established, whether or not they had been specifically designated in the original description. For example, Hartert (1918: 4) wrote ‘‘The fixing of the types in the Brehm Collection has not been easy. … Only a careful comparison of the descriptions with the specimens in the collection could in some cases decide whether a specimen could be regarded as ‘type’ or not.’’ And again, he ( Hartert, 1919a: 123) wrote ‘‘The majority of the birds described from the Tring Museum are naturally named by Lord Rothschild and myself, and next to ourselves by those ornithologists who have temporarily worked here … but there are altogether also a good many types made by other ornithologists in the collection, partly purchased with smaller collections or allowed to be described when already in the Tring Museum. … A critical examination of all types is not always easy and my judgment may not be correct in every case, but I trust that it is so in nearly all instances.’’ These statements make it quite clear that Hartert was attempting to ‘‘fix’’ the types present in the Rothschild Collection, to avoid questions about them in the future. In most cases this provided effective lectotypification of a particular specimen if a type had not been designated in the original description, but because the Rothschild Collection was not cataloged, there was sometimes no unique number that could be specified for a type. This introduced ambiguity into Hartert’s lists when several specimens in AMNH bear the same label data, and in those instances, it is important to give valid standing to the specimens that Hartert intended to fix as the types, especially as some of the collections were widely scattered via dealers. In a confusing manner, Mees (1957, 1961a, 1969) sometimes accepted the type listed by Hartert as the lectotype when no holotype had been designated, but in other cases, he did not. In the case of Z. superciliaris , he did not.

Hartert (1920: 437) listed a type (5 lectotype) of Z. superciliaris , and the data on the specimen bearing the Rothschild type label agree with the data published by Hartert for the type; Everett’s label is marked ‘‘Type of the species’’ in Hartert’s hand. Certainly, specimens in other collections would not have type status; nor is such status claimed by Warren and Harrison (1971: 545) for specimens in BMNH mentioned by Mees (1969: 197). Therefore there does not appear to be any evidence for Mees’ (1969: 197) statement that all of the specimens collected by Everett and his hunters in October– November are cotypes (5 syntypes).

As noted by Miriam Rothschild (1983: 158), Rothschild usually purchased up to six specimens of any form offered him by collectors. Any remaining specimens were then sent to dealers to be sold for the collector. It appears that this is what occurred in the case of Z. superciliaris , but it is unclear whether Hartert used all of the specimens or only the ones purchased by Rothschild for his description. However, the specimens Hartert used would comprise his type series and specimens other than the lectotype therefore become paralectotypes. Information I supplied to Dekker and Quaisser (2006: 22) caused them to list Everett’s specimen of Z. superciliaris that is now in RMNH as a paralectotype. And because we do not know whether or not Hartert used all of the specimens Everett collected at that time, Dekker and Quaisser’s decision was correct.

I did not at that time recognize the ambiguity in Hartert’s (1920: 437) listing of the type and considered it a valid designation of a lectotype because the data for the type published by Hartert (1920: 437) agreed with the data on the specimen. Ambiguity arises, however, in cases where more than one specimen in AMNH has the same collection data as ‘‘the type.’’ In this case, there are two, and I have removed the ambiguity by designating as lectotype the specimen that Hartert intended as the type, which now has a unique AMNH catalog number.