Hirundo leucopyga Meyen, 1834

Mlíkovský, Jiŕí & Frahnert, Sylke, 2009, Nomenclatural notes on Neotropical swallows of the genus Tachycineta Cabanis (Aves: Hirundinidae), Zootaxa 2209 (1), pp. 65-68 : 66

Hirundo leucopyga Meyen, 1834

Meyen (1834: 73) used Lichtenstein’s label name Hirundo leucopyga for a Tachycineta swallow, providing a description for it. Herewith, he became its author ( ICZN 1999, Art. 50.1). Meyen (1834) included in this new species two specimens, which thus constitute its type series. One of the syntypes (ZMB 8313), collected by Meyen at Santiago de Chile, Chile [ca. 33.45°S, 70.60°W], is still present in the ZMB, while the other (ZMB 8312), collected at Montevideo, Uruguay [ca. 34.90°S, 56.15°W] and examined by Meyen (1834: 73) in the ZMB, apparently has been lost, because we did not find it in 2008. The latter specimen was collected by Friedrich Sellow (1769–1831), probably between late 1821 and November 1822 (cf. Weiss 1830: 218). The syntypes actually belonged to two different species: the Chilean one to the Chilean Swallow, and the Uruguayan one (see Meyen’s 1834: 73 description and Cabanis 1850: 48 for the identity of this specimen) to the White-rumped Swallow, currently known as Tachycineta leucorrhoa (Vieillot, 1817) . Hellmayr (1932: 48) incorrectly stated that Meyen (1834) based his Hirundo leucopyga solely on the Chilean specimen, but his statement can be interpreted as a designation of the latter specimen as a lectotype of Hirundo leucopyga Meyen ( ICZN 1999, Art. 74.6). Herewith, the taxonomic meaning of the name has been fixed.