Guadalcanaria inexpectata Hartert, 1929

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 : 85-86

Guadalcanaria inexpectata Hartert

Guadalcanaria inexpectata Hartert, 1929: 8 (Guadalcanar) .

Now Guadalcanaria inexpectata Hartert, 1929 . See Mayr and Diamond, 2001: 399, Dickinson, 2003: 433, and Higgins et al., 2008: 588–589.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 220323 , adult male, collected on Guadalcanal (5 Guadalcanar) Island, Solomon Islands, on 25 July 1927, by Ida (Mrs. Rollo H.) Beck, on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 26871).

COMMENTS: Hartert (1929: 8) introduced the genus Guadalcanaria at this time, with inexpectata as the type species. He gave the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description and noted that his type series comprised four male and two female specimens. The five paratypes are: AMNH 218408, male, AMNH 218410, female, AMNH 220322, male, AMNH 220326, male, AMNH 220327, female, collected 25–27 July 1927. Only these specimens, labeled in permanent ink, were examined by Hartert and thus are his type series. Other specimens, collected at the same time but labeled in pencil, were not sent to Hartert and are not paratypes, e.g., Dekker and Quaisser (2006: 29).

The expedition ship France was anchored in a bay near Cape Hunter, Guadalcanal, in late July 1927, and the collecting party went inland from the mouth of the Itina (or Ithina) River (09.48S, 159.51E, USBGN, 1974b) to a height of 4000 ft (R.H. Beck, unpublished Journal D of the Whitney South Sea Expedition, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH).

Salomonsen (1967: 376) included inexpectata in the genus Meliphaga , but relationships of Guadalcanaria are uncertain ( Higgins et al., 2008: 588), and Guadalcanaria is retained pending further studies.