Myzomela nigra ashbyi 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 : 70-71

Myzomela nigra ashbyi Mathews

Myzomela nigra ashbyi Mathews, 1912d: 98 (Mount Barker, South Australia).

Now Sugomel niger (Gould, 1838) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 364, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 331, Driskell and Christidis, 2004: 955, Christidis and Boles, 2009: 186, 188, and Higgins et al., 2008: 636–637.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 693417 , adult male, collected at Mount Barker , 35.06S, 138.52E (Times Atlas), South Australia, Australia, in December 1888, by Edwin Ashby (no. 344). From the Mathews Collection (no. 3025) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description and gave the range of ashbyi as ‘‘ South Australia to Queensland.’’ The holotype bears Mathews and Rothschild type labels in addition to Ashby’s original label. The following paratypes are in AMNH: AMNH 155647 , adult male, Mount Barker , December 1888, collected by Ashby and received by AMNH directly from him in exchange, marked ‘‘ Co-type’ ’ (Ashby often loaned specimens to Mathews, and this is probably why the specimen from Ashby’s collection is so marked) ; AMNH 693418 (Mathews no. 3026), female, Mount Barker , December 1888, also from the Ashby Collection ; AMNH 693419 (3024), adult male, Pine Plains , Victoria, 15 October 1880, no original label. Mathews’ label of the last specimen is marked ‘‘doubtful ??’’ by him, but it is not clear to what the annotation refers. There may be additional paratypes in SAMA or ANSP .

Mathews (1922a: 7) named the genus Sugomel , with ‘‘ Myzomela nigra ashby [sic]’’ given as the type species. See above for discussion regarding Sugomel as masculine.