Zosterops samoensis Murphy and Mathews

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 : 26

Zosterops samoensis Murphy and Mathews

Zosterops samoensis Murphy and Mathews, 1929: 11 (Savaii Island, Samoa).

Now Zosterops samoensis Murphy and Mathews, 1929 . See Mees, 1969: 141–142, Watling, 2001: 165–166, and van Balen, 2008: 465.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 206312 , adult female, collected on Savai’i Island , Western Samoa, on 23 May 1924, by Rollo H. Beck on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 12729).

COMMENTS: Murphy and Mathews gave the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description and said that they examined 24 specimens collected on Savai’i on 19 and 23 May 1924. The paratypes are: AMNH 206301–206311 , 206313–206321 , 206423 , 222154 , 222155 . Of these, AMNH 206317 was exchanged to ZMB ; AMNH 206319 was exchanged to NRM ; and AMNH 206320 and 222154 were exchanged to ANSP. Four specimens were exchanged to Rothschild and renumbered when they returned to AMNH: AMNH 206303 (700785) ; AMNH 206309 (700787) ; AMNH 206313 (700786) ; and AMNH 206321 (700788) .

According to Beck’s journal volume F, unpublished journals of the Whitney South Sea Expedition, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH, the expedition vessel, France, was anchored at Salailua Bay, 13.39S, 172.33W (Times Atlas), on 23 May 1924.

For a study of genetic and phenotypic divergence within and among populations of Zosterops flavifrons in Vanuatu, see Phillimore et al. (2008).