Pardalotus pallida Campbell

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 : 119

Pardalotus pallida Campbell

Pardalotus pallida Campbell, 1909: 142 (region of the Coongan and De Grey Rivers).

Now Pardalotus rubricatus rubricatus Gould, 1838 . See Salomonsen, 1961b: 16–24, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 126–127, and Woinarski, 2008: 401.

SYNTYPE?: AMNH 699131, adult female, collected at Marble Bar, 21.16S, 119.45E (Times Atlas), Pilbara Goldfield, Western Australia, Australia, on 26 June 1908, by F. Lawson Whitlock. From the Mathews Collection (no. 2911) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description Campbell said that ‘‘ The bird was collected [for H.L. White] by Mr. F. Lawson Whitlock in the region of the Coongan and the De Grey Rivers,’’ but he did not designate a type. Only the female was described, and only one set of measurements was given. The AMNH specimen is from Marble Bar, which is on the Coongan River. It bears Mathews’ catalog number 2911, where it is marked ‘‘Type’’ by Mathews. In the catalog, the collecting locality is entered as ‘‘Coongan River,’’ although that locality does not appear on the original label ; and the date of collecting has been changed from 5-7-08 to 26-6-08, which is the date on the AMNH specimen. This specimen was cataloged early by Mathews; without any indication of whom he received it from. However, writing on the original label in red pen ‘‘ Pardalotus rubricatus (?),’’ ‘‘Desert variety’’ is annotated with Campbell’s characteristic initials ‘‘A, overwritten by C.’’ This indicates that the specimen probably came to Mathews from Campbell. According to Wayne Longmore (personal commun.), there is another syntype in NMV from the Coongan River, dated 5 July 1908. Because Mathews frequently overwrote an entry in his catalog, presumably when he exchanged a bird, the fact that the date is overwritten and the locality given as ‘‘ Coongan River’ ’ when this does not appear on the label of the AMNH bird but matches the data on the NMV syntype, makes it likely that he once had a specimen with data that matched the syntype (perhaps holotype) in H.L. White’s collection. This, apparently, was later replaced with a specimen obtained from Campbell, with Mathews neglecting to cross out the ‘‘type’’ designation in his catalog. AMNH 699131 bears, in addition to Whitlock’s label, Mathews and Rothschild type labels. An AMNH type label has been added, with its type status questioned .