Myzantha melanocephala leachi Mathews

Mary, 2011, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 9. Passeriformes: Zosteropidae And Meliphagidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (348), pp. 1-193 : 158

Myzantha melanocephala leachi Mathews

Myzantha melanocephala leachi Mathews, 1912a: 417 (Tasmania) .

Now Manorina melanocephala leachi (Mathews, 1912) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 440, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 266–268, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 616– 617.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 694410 , sex?, collected in Tasmania, undated, by R.H.W. Leach. From the Mathews Collection (no. 9466) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description and gave the range of leachi as ‘‘ Tasmania.’’ The holotype has no original label and bears a Mathews Collection label, Mathews and Rothschild type labels, and a ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1925a: pl. 546, opp. p. 39, text p. 40), where it is confirmed as the type of leachi. This specimen from Leach was cataloged singly on 15 October 1911, along with a number of other type specimens. There are five additional undated Tasmanian specimens of M. melanocephala from the Mathews Collection, but I did not find any of them in his catalog and do not consider them paratypes.

Salomonsen (1967: 440) considered leachi a synonym of nominate melanocephala ; whereas, Schodde and Mason (1999: 266– 268) and Higgins et al. (2008: 616–617) recognized it.