Ptilotis cratitia howei 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 : 91

Ptilotis cratitia howei Mathews

Ptilotis cratitia howei Mathews, 1912a: 409 (Kow Plains, Victoria).

Now Lichenostomus cratitius occidentalis Cabanis, 1851 . See Salomonsen, 1967: 380, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 245–246, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 605.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 695260 , adult male, collected at Kow Plains , Victoria, Australia, on 11 October 1909, by F. Erasmus Howe. From the Mathews Collection (no. 4554, not 5445) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In his original description, Mathews gave Kow Plains as the collecting locality and 5445 as the catalog number of his type. In his catalog, however, the specimen registered at this number is Menura superba ! The correct catalog number is 4554, for which 5445 seems to have been a simple error in transcription. The holotype of howei bears Mathews and Rothschild type labels and a Mathews ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was the model for Mathews (1924: pl. 537, top figure, opp. p. 515, text p. 516), where the male described and figured was collected on 11 October 1909 at Kow Plains and was said to be the type of howei, thereby confirming its status. The number ‘‘783’’ on Howe’s label refers to this species in Mathews (1908).

Mathews gave the range of howei as ‘‘ Victoria.’’ There are two paratypes in AMNH: AMNH 695261 (Mathews no. 4553), female, Kow Plains , 11 October 1909, collected by Howe ; and AMNH 695262 (3243), female, Carina, 25 September 1908, also undoubtedly collected by Howe (1910: 227–234), although not so noted by Mathews. Kow Plains, in western Victoria, is 35 miles east of Pinnaroo , 35.18S, 140.54E (Times Atlas), South Australia .

See Schodde and Mason (1999: 246) concerning use of occidentalis for mainland populations of L. cratitius .