Xanthornus affinis Lawrence

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 52

Xanthornus affinis Lawrence

Xanthornus affinis Lawrence, 1851: 113 (Rio Grande, Texas).

Now Icterus spurius spurius (Linnaeus, 1766) . See Hellmayr, 1937: 105–107; Blake, 1968: 161–162; Scharf and Kren, 1996: 3; Omland et al., 1999; Dickinson, 2003: 770; and Fraga, 2011: 770.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 41954 (Lawrence no. a414a), adult male, AMNH 14958 (c414a), immature male, AMNH 41960 (b414a), all collected at Brownsville, 25.54N, 97.30W (Times atlas), Rio Grande, Texas, by J.P. McCown. From the George N. Lawrence Collection.

COMMENTS: Lawrence did not designate a type in the original description and described both the adult male and immature male. Five specimens, all male, of this form were cataloged with the Lawrence Collection at AMNH, but I have found only three, two adult males and one immature male, still present in the collection. Only AMNH 41954 is marked ‘‘Type’’ by Lawrence and is the only specimen that had been included in the AMNH type collection. AMNH type labels have been added to the other two specifomens and they have been added to the type collection. The other two specimens, AMNH 41956, 41962, males, collected in Texas by McCown, if found, should also probably be considered syntypes, although none of the specimens is dated. If either of these specimens had been exchanged, the most likely recipients would have been ANSP or USNM, but neither N. Rice (personal commun.), ANSP, nor C. Milensky (personal commun.), USNM, found them in those collections.

Although some authors record this name as having been introduced in 1852, it appeared in the section of volume 5 of the Annals published in May 1851 (not 1881, Foster, 1892: 2). In the original description, Lawrence said that affinis was found breeding in April and that his specimens had been collected in ‘‘the past year,’’ i.e., 1850. On the labels of all three syntypes, Lawrence recorded the collecting locality as Brownsville.

Fraga (2011: 770) treated I. spurius as monotypic.