Certhia megarhynchos Brehm

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 : 94

Certhia megarhynchos Brehm

Certhia megarhynchos Brehm, 1831: 211 (bewohnt das westliche Deutschland, namentlich Westphalen, ist mir in der hiesigen Gegend nur einmal vorgekommen).

Now Certhia brachydactyla brachydactyla Brehm, 1820 . See Hartert, 1918a: 26, Vaurie, 1959: 542– 543, and Harrap, 2008: 183–184.

SYNTYPE: AMNH 457353, adult male, collected at Renthendorf, 50.48N, 11.58E (USBGN, 1959), Germany, on 29 December 1816. From the Brehm Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert (1918a: 26) thought that the specimen that was the type of Brehm’s brachydactyla (see above) was perhaps also the type of megarhynchos , and I think that this is correct. In the original description of megarhynchos, Brehm said: ‘‘bewohnt das westliche Deutschland, namentlich Westphalen, ist mir in der hiesigen Gegend nur einmal vorgekommen.’’ On his original label of AMNH 457353, Brehm has written ‘‘megarhynchos’’ and ‘‘Das Urexemplar zur Beschreibung.’’ No Brehm specimen from Westphalia came to AMNH, and no other Brehm specimens in AMNH that were labeled megarhnychos were collected before the description was published in 1831. Hartert (1905d: 323) considered C. megarhynchos a synonym of C. brachydactyla , which must be the case if both names are based on the same specimen. Unless or until it is found that other specimens in Brehm’s Westphalian syntype series are of the form currently recognized as megarhynchos , and can provide a lectotype to fix its name, the name megarhynchos Brehm , cannot be used for it, contra Dickinson (2003: 648) and Harrap (2008: 183–184).