Pachycephala pectoralis ambigua Mayr

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 37

Pachycephala pectoralis ambigua Mayr

Pachycephala pectoralis ambigua Mayr, 1932b: 16 (Rambi Island, Fiji Islands).

Now Pachycephala vitiensis ambigua Mayr, 1932 . See Galbraith, 1956: 198, Watling, 2001: 160– 161, Dickinson, 2003: 477, and Boles, 2007: 421.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 252825 , adult male, collected on Rabi (5 Rambi) Island, 16.30S, 179.59E ( USBGN, 1974), Fiji, on 4 December 1924, by Rollo H. Beck on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 15872).

COMMENTS: The AMNH number of the holotype was cited in the original description and the range of the subspecies given as Rambi and Kio islands and Thakaundrove Peninsula of Vanua Levu Island. The Whitney Expedition visited the Thakaundrove Peninsula, 16.44S, 179.47W ( USBGN, 1974), just across the strait from Kio Island, only on 8 December 1924 (Beck’s unpublished journal, vol. D, archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH) ; and only those Vanua Levu specimens collected on that date are paratypes of ambigua. Paratypes are: Rambi, AMNH 2 2 4 0 4 9, 252753–252763, 252815–252824, 252826–252828, and 252857 ; Kio, AMNH 252789–252795 ; Thakaundrove Peninsula, AMNH 252764–252766 , 252829 . I did not find AMNH 252754 , 252817 , and 252827 in the collection ; they were perhaps exchanged to other institutions without the catalog having been marked.

Galbraith (1956: 198) and Watling (2001: 160–161) considered ambigua to be a synonym of P. pectoralis aurantiiventris ; Dickinson (2003: 477) recognized ambigua and included it with the other Fijian forms in the species P. vitiensis ; Boles (2007: 421) recognized ambigua in the species P. pectoralis .