Ptilopus (Leucotreron) alligator Collett, 1898

Johannessen, Lars Erik & Lifjeld, Jan T., 2022, Type specimens of birds in the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Norway, Zootaxa 5150 (4), pp. 451-486 : 458

Ptilopus (Leucotreron) alligator Collett, 1898

Proceedings of the General Meetings for Scientific Business of the Zoological Society of London, 1898 (3): 354–355.

Current name: Ptilinopus alligator Collett, 1898

Syntype NHMO-BI-77948; Mounted; Ad. M; Knut Dahl (1247), 15 June 1895; Australia: South Alligator River; 13.515° S 132.505° E; 8b.

Remarks: Collett (1898) based the original description on two birds, a male and a female collected by Knut Dahl, without specifying any one of them as the holotype. The other specimen was sent to the BMNH ( Sharpe 1906; Warren 1966), where it is currently catalogued as NHMUK 1898.10.10.2 ( Natural History Museum 2014b; Hein van Grouw, pers. comm.). Based on a list of specimens collected by Dahl during his Australia expedition (unpublished), it is evident that the original collector’s number of the NHMUK specimen must be 1248.

The original label, written by the collector, is present at the base of the stand ( Figure 2b ). The species is also here referred to simply as ‘Columba’.

Collett placed this new taxon in the subgenus Leucotreron and used the spelling Ptilopus for the genus, while the original spelling was Ptilinopus ( Swainson 1825) . The form Ptilopus was apparently introduced by Strickland (1841: p. 36), posing the question ‘Should not Ptilonopus [sic] be written Ptilopus ? ’, and in the period to follow this seemed to be the favoured spelling of the genus (e.g. Bonaparte 1857; Rowley 1877; Elliot 1878). Currently the original spelling is again used by all the major taxonomic lists, including the IOC World Bird List ( Gill et al. 2022), and Leucotreron is no longer recognized as a subgenus. According to the Code ( International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 1999) these changes in the spelling of the genus name (Article 51.3.1) and rank (Article 51.3.2) do not warrant use of parentheses around the original author name.

For the NHMUK specimen, slightly different coordinates are provided for the South Alligator River locality ( Warren 1966; Schodde & Mason 1997; Natural History Museum 2014b); 13° 30`S, 132° 50`E = 13.500° S 132.833° E, i.e. ca. 29 km further east than those provided above. While the location provided in the current publication is based on a detailed study of the travelogue of the collector ( Dahl 1898; 1926), as well as his field diaries and letters to Collett, it has not been possible to find any documented source of the coordinates given in the NHMUK records. It is therefore assumed that they are added simply on the basis of the rather wide-ranging locality name (no coordinates are present, neither in the register book nor on any of the labels of the specimen; Hein van Grouw, pers. comm.). As Dahl in a letter to Collett stated that they had been travelling in the mountains between the Mary and South Alligator Rivers , we consider the coordinates presented here to be the more likely of the two sets (though still subject to the cautionary note provided in the Format section above).

Figures

FIGURE 2. Labels of type specimens in the NHMO Bird Collection described by R. Collett. a) Petrophassa rufipennis NHMO- BI-77947 (collector’s label); b) Ptilopus (Leucotreron) alligator NHMO-BI-77948 (collector’s label); c) Psephotus dissimilis NHMO-BI-64125 (collector’s label); d) Psephotus dissimilis NHMO-BI-64125 (NHMO label); e) Psephotus dissimilis NHMO- BI-85843 (collector’s label).