Cryptolopha bicolor Styan, 1892: 6 (Hainan)

Mary, Croy, History, Bulletin Of The American Museum Of Natural, At, Central Park West, Street, Th, York, New & Ny, 2005, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History. Part 6. Passeriformes: Prunellidae, Turdidae, Orthonychidae, Timaliidae, Paradoxornithidae, Picathartidae, And Polioptilidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2005 (292), pp. 1-132 : 101-102

Cryptolopha bicolor Styan, 1892: 6 (Hainan) .

Now Erpornis zantholeuca tyrannulus (Swinhoe, 1870) . See Styan, 1893b: 428, Cibois et al., 2002: 385–386, and Dickinson, 2003: 622.

SYNTYPE: AMNH 571600, adult male, collected at Na Ta (5 Nodouha), 198349N, 1098359E (Times Atlas), interior Hainan Island, Guangdong, China, on 6 May 1891 by a collector for B. Schmacker (no. 257). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Styan (1892: 6) described five new taxa, including this one, giving minimal information, with no indication of the number of specimens or the exact locality. Later, Styan (1893a: 55) republished his ‘‘new species’’, with the addition of a detailed description, and noted that Schmacker’s hunter had collected in the interior of Hainan in 1891 and 1892 and that he had ‘‘several specimens’’ of C. bicolor obtained in May. There are no other Schmacker specimens of this form in AMNH. By the time Styan (1893b: 428) published his comprehensive list of the birds of Hainan, he was already aware that C. bicolor was a synonym of ‘‘ Herpornis tyrannulus ’’.

According to Styan (1893b: 425), Schmacker’s collector on Hainan, Tetsu, made two trips into the ‘‘mountainous regions of the south­west’’ between May 1891 and January 1892 and collected specimens of ‘‘about 40’’ species. Nodouha (No Tai) is in the interior, ‘‘in a valley opening northwards from the great central highlands’’ ( Styan, 1893b: 426).

This specimen had not previously been included in the AMNH type collection. Neither the original label nor the Rothschild label bears Schmacker’s or Styan’s name, but the printed label and the handwriting on it match labels in BMNH (M. Walters and E.C. Dickinson, personal commun.) and on other specimens in AMNH known to be Schmacker specimens with Styan labels (e.g., AMNH 587139 Garrulax chinensis monachus ). It is known that in January 1904, Rothschild purchased from Styan nine specimens of Chinese birds, but no list accompanied that notation in Rothschild’s partial list of purchases (Archives, AMNH Dept. of Ornithology).

In their recent molecular studies of babblers in the genera Yuhina and Stachyris, Cibois et al. (2002: 385–386) found that Yuhina zantholeuca was not closely related to typical members of the genus Yuhina and suggested resurrection of the genus Erpornis Hodgson, 1844 , for this species, pending further studies on its exact relationships.