Ptilotis fasciogularis brunnescens 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 : 85

Ptilotis fasciogularis brunnescens Mathews

Ptilotis fasciogularis brunnescens Mathews, 1912a: 407 (North Queensland).

Now Lichenostomus fasciogularis (Gould, 1854) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 376, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 237, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 601.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 694919 , [male], collected in Queensland, in November 1892. From the Mathews Collection (no. 7772) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description, where he gave both the collecting locality and the range of the form as ‘‘North Queensland.’’ The original label on the holotype gives the locality as ‘‘(Cape York) Queensland,’’ but there is no indication of the collector. Catalog no. 7772 was part of the Thorpe Collection, which Mathews (1942: 53) purchased from T. Thorpe in England and cataloged in February 1911. The holotype bears in addition Rothschild and Mathews type labels, and a ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1924: pl. 532, upper fig., opp. p. 470, text p. 473), where it is confirmed as the type of brunnescens and where Mathews restricted the type locality to the Burnett River. A possible source of this restriction is a statement in Mathews (1924: 474–475) that Campbell had received a specimen, nest, and eggs from G.A. Young, who said that the species ‘‘is plentiful in the mangroves bordering the Burnett River. …’’ Mathews apparently never cited ‘‘Cape York’’ with regard to the collecting locality of his holotype, and the species does not reach Cape York. The true collecting locality of the holotype remains unknown.

In addition to the holotype, Mathews had three specimens collected by W. Stalker ( Ingram, 1908: 476) at Inkerman. These are paratypes of brunnescens: AMNH 694916 (Mathews no. 3221), male, 18 April 1907; AMNH 694917 (3219), unsexed; AMNH 694918 (3220), unsexed. Of these three, only the first has Stalker’s original label and it is dated 1907(although this is incorrectly listed as ‘‘1908’’ in Mathews’ catalog and copied as ‘‘1908’’ on the Rothschild label. The other two have only Mathews Collection labels, and they are dated April 1908. They were probably all collected in April 1907, as Ingram (1908: 458) said that Stalker began collecting at Inkerman in early 1907, and all of the dates cited by Ingram are in 1907. Ford (1978) considered these specimens intermediate between L. versicolor versicolor and L. fasciogularis but closer to fasciogularis .