Meliphaga gracilis cinereifrons Rand, 1936

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 : 76

Meliphaga gracilis cinereifrons Rand

Meliphaga gracilis cinereifrons Rand, 1936: 20 (Rona, Central Division, Territory of Papua).

Now Meliphaga gracilis cinereifrons Rand, 1936 . See Coates, 1990: 292–294, Dickinson, 2003: 434, and Higgins et al., 2008: 592.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 421327 , adult male, collected at Rouna (5 Rona), 450 m, ca. 09.24S, 147.22E, Central Province, Papua New Guinea, on 11 March 1933, by Richard Archbold and Austin L. Rand on the 1933– 1934 Archbold Expedition to New Guinea (no. 55).

COMMENTS: Rand gave the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description and said that he had 17 specimens, including the type. I did not find one of the females from Rouna mentioned by Rand in either the collection or the catalog. The 15 paratypes in AMNH are: Samarai, male, AMNH 267973; Port Moresby, males, AMNH 295693– 295696; Orangerie Bay, female, AMNH 295698; Papuan mainland opposite Samarai, male, AMNH 330236; Baroka, male, AMNH 421323, females, AMNH 421324, 421325, sex?, AMNH 421326; Rouna, male, AMNH 421091, female, AMNH 421327A, sex?, AMNH 421328; Nicura, male, AMNH 695911. See Mayr and Rand (1937) for an account of the birds collected and Archbold and Rand (1935) for a summary of the expedition. Higgins et al. (2008: 592) treated cinereifrons as a monotypic species with treatment of subspecies stevensi unresolved.