Paradisea apoda (Var.)

Lecroy, Mary, 2014, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 12. Passeriformes: Ploceidae, Sturnidae, Buphagidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, Callaeidae, Grallinidae, Corcoracidae, Artamidae, Cracticidae, Ptilonorhynchidae, Cnemophilidae, Paradisaeidae, And Corvidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2014 (393), pp. 1-165 : 107

Paradisea apoda (Var.) novae guineae

D’Albertis and Salvadori

Paradisea apoda (Var.) novae guineae D’Albertis and Salvadori, 1879: 96 (Fiume Fly).

Now Paradisaea apoda novaeguineae D’Albertis and Salvadori, 1879 . See Salvadori, 1881: 609– 612; Rothschild and Hartert, 1903a: 80; Mayr, 1962d: 199; Gilliard, 1969: 214–222; Coates, 1990: 517–519; Cracraft 1992: 34; Frith and Beehler, 1998: 448–456; and Frith and Frith, 2009b: 487–488.

PROBABLE SYNTYPE: AMNH 678778, adult male, SYNTYPE: AMNH 678779, immature male, both collected on the Fly River, 400 m, 08.00S, 142.00E ( Frith and Beehler, 1998: 567), Western Province, Papua New Guinea, on 23 July 1877, by L.M. D’Albertis (nos. 355 and 335, respectively). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, D’Albertis and Salvadori did not designate a type, therefore the 40 (not 41) specimens collected in 1877 that they listed, giving D’Albertis’ field numbers, are all syntypes. Rothschild received two specimens from Salvadori. The immature male, AMNH 678779, is a definite syntype, listed by D’Albertis and Salvadori (1879: 97) and by Salvadori (1881: 611), where he enumerated all the specimens of novaeguineae again and in the same order as they were given in the original description. The adult male, AMNH 678778, is a bit more problematic, as it was apparently listed as ‘‘no. 365’’ in the original description, but the number was corrected to ‘‘no. 355’’ in Salvadori (1881: 610) without comment. Three additional numbers were also corrected by Salvadori (1881: 610–611): nos. 303 to 382, 203 to 293, and 714 to 614. It seems likely that D’Albertis’ number of this specimen was a misprint in the original description, but I do not know the whereabouts of all the syntypes. Arbucco et al. (1979: 248) listed 15 syntypes as held in MSNG, but without giving D’Albertis’ numbers.

The two AMNH syntypes were not listed by Hartert in any of his lists of types in the Rothschild Collection and had not been included with the AMNH types until they were called to my attention by Carlo Violani (personal commun.). AMNH type labels have been added.

Most authors have recognized this subspecies, but Cracraft (1992: 34) did not consider it diagnosably distinct from the nominate form.