Meliphaga mimikae rara Salomonsen, 1966

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 : 71

Meliphaga mimikae rara Salomonsen

Meliphaga mimikae rara Salomonsen, 1966a: 4 (Bernhard Camp, Idenburg River, 50 meters altitude, northwestern New Guinea).

Now Meliphaga analoga flavida Stresemann and Paludan, 1932 . See Diamond, 1972: 370–371, and Higgins et al., 2008: 592.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 342965 , adult male, collected at Bernhard Camp , 50 m., ca. 03.30S, 139.15E ( Archbold et al., 1942: map 1), Taritatu (5 Idenburg) River, Papua Province, Indonesia, on 26 April 1939, by Richard Archbold, W.B. Richardson, and A.L. Rand on the 1938–1939 Archbold Expedition (no. 11002).

COMMENTS: Salomonsen (1966a: 4) named this form, based on a single specimen, as a subspecies of M. mimikae . Rand (1942b: 508) had merely called attention to the fact that this individual differed from an otherwise uniform series of specimens of M. analoga flavida but included it in flavida. Diamond (1972: 370–371) discussed this type, providing a cogent argument based on size, altitude, and distribution of the two species against using this ‘‘single specimen as evidence for a new race and large range extension of M. mimikae . ’’ Higgins et al. (2008: 592) considered rara of ‘‘doubtful validity.’’