Nigrita sparsimguttata Reichenow

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 : 84

Nigrita sparsimguttata Reichenow

Nigrita sparsimguttata Reichenow, 1891: 4 (Bukoba) .

Now Nigrita canicapillus schistaceus Sharpe, 1891 . See Reichenow, 1892: 47; Hartert, 1919: 144; Mayr et al., 1968: 310; Dickinson, 2003: 726– 727; Fry and Keith, 2004: 255–257; and Payne, 2010: 306–307.

SYNTYPE: AMNH 727929, adult unsexed, collected at Bukoba, 01.20S, 31.49E ( Polhill, 1988), Lake Victoria, Tanzania, November 1890, by Emin Pasha. From the the Rothshild Collection.

COMMENTS: Reichenow’s description of sparsimguttata was published 17 December 1891 in Sitzungsberichte der Allgemeinen Deutschen Ornithologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin (9: 4) [reprinted in Journal fuer Ornithologie, 1892, 40: 132]. In the original description, Reichenow did not designate a type or say how many specimens he examined. Hartert (1919a: 144) listed this specimen as a ‘‘Co-type’’ (5 syntype) of sparsimguttata and considered it a synonym of N. canicapillus schistaceus Sharpe , which had been published in January 1891 ( Sharpe, 1891: 118). In his report on Emin’s and Stuhlmann’s collections Reichenow (1892: 47) gave details about the earlier publication of sparsimguttata and 1–25 November as the dates when Emin was in Bukoba. In addition to the original label, the specimen bears a Rothschild type label. Emin (1891) himself reported on this trip, and on page 346 listed this form as N. canicapilla .

Mayr et al. (1968: 310) recognized both N. c. schistaceus and N. c. sparsimguttatus, using the incorrect publication date of 1892 for the latter. Most other authors have considered the two to be synonyms.