Myzomela cardinalis asuncionis Salomonsen

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 : 68

Myzomela cardinalis asuncionis Salomonsen

Myzomela cardinalis asuncionis Salomonsen, 1966a: 3 (Asuncion Island, in the northern Marianas Islands).

Now Myzomela rubratra asuncionis Salomonsen, 1966 . See Pratt et al., 1987: 277, Dickinson, 2003: 442, and Higgins et al., 2008: 644–645.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 692934 , unsexed [adult female], collected on Asuncion Island , 19.34N, 145.24E (Times Atlas), Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, in June 1904, by Owston’s Japanese Collectors. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Salomonsen gave the AMNH number of the holotype, noting that the type was the only adult female ever collected. However, this specimen had not been sexed by the collector. He considered the range of asuncionis to be the Northern Mariana Islands of Asuncion, Agrihan, Pagan, and Alamagan. Without citing the number of male specimens he examined, Salomonsen said that the male differed from the male of the allied subspecies saffordi in having larger proportions. The only male paratype in AMNH is AMNH 692933, collected on Agrihan (Agrigan on label) in December 1888 by A. Marche (no. 5717). Specimens from Saipan were considered intermediate between saffordi and asuncionis by Salomonsen. Pratt et al. (1987: 277) omitted asuncionis, apparently including it in saffordi; Dickinson (2003: 442) and Higgins et al. (2008: 644) listed it without comment.