Amblyornis inornatus mayri Hartert

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 : 82-83

Amblyornis inornatus mayri Hartert

Amblyornis inornatus mayri Hartert, 1930: 30 (probably Karon (‘‘Karoon’’), northern Vogelkop).

Now Amblyornis macgregoriae mayri Hartert, 1930 . See Rothschild, 1931: 251; Mayr, 1941: 183; Gilliard, 1969: 300–311; Dickinson, 2003: 427; and Frith and Frith, 2004: 275–278; 2009a: 394–395.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 679525, adult male, AMNH 679526, [adult male], supposedly collected at Karon, northern Vogelkop, but type locality evidently = Weyland Mountains, undated, collected by collectors for van Renesse van Duivenbode. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In his report on the 1928– 1929 collection made by Ernst Mayr in what was at that time northern Dutch New Guinea, Hartert (1930: 29–30) addressed the problem of whether males of Amblyornis inornatus possessed the orange crest of forms of Amblyornis from farther east in New Guinea. None of Mayr’s recently collected specimens from the Arfak area and the mountains of the Wandammen Peninsula had crests, nor had others from the Arfak that were well-labeled as to locality. The Rothschild Collection held a number of ‘‘trade-skins’’ with unreliable or no collecting locality that did possess crests. Hartert named a crested form supposed to be from Karon, northern Vogelkop, Amblyornis inornatus mayri . There are only two specimens labeled with the locality ‘‘Karon’’ in AMNH, and I have considered both of them syntypes. Although the Rothschild type label is tied on AMNH 679526, it is only on the label of the other, AMNH 679525, that there is a note: ‘‘Bought from Renesse van Duivenbode 1895.’’ Although both were probably purchased from him, only this specimen gives the date mentioned by Hartert (1930: 29). An AMNH type label has been added to AMNH 679525. This name was introduced too late to have been included in any of Hartert’s lists of types in the Rothschild Collection. See Mayr (1930a: 23–25) for an account of Mayr’s expedition into the Arfak Mountains and mountains of the Wandammen Peninsula.

Rothschild (1931: 251), reporting on a collection of birds made by Fred Shaw Mayer in the Weyland Mountains, realized that specimens from there matched the specimens supposedly from Karon and restricted the type locality of A.i. mayri to the Weyland Mountains. It later became evident that van Renesse van Duivenbode had collectors working in the Weylands ( Stresemann, 1934: 145–146; Hartert et al., 1936: 167, footnote 2); also see Loboparadisea sericea and Astrapia splendidissima . Mayr (1941: 183) included mayri in the species A. macgregoriae , leaving A. inornatus monotypic.