Spermophila semicollaris Lawrence

LeCroy, Mary, 2012, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 10. Passeriformes: Emberizidae: Emberizinae, Catamblyrhynchinae, Cardinalinae, Thraupinae, And Tersininae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2012 (368), pp. 1-125 : 29-30

Spermophila semicollaris Lawrence

Spermophila semicollaris Lawrence, 1863: 10 (along the line of the Panama Railroad).

Now considered part of a population intermediate between Sporophila corvina corvina and S. c. hicksii. See Hellmayr, 1938: 191, Olson, 1981b, Stiles, 1996, and Dickinson, 2003: 972.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 41301, male, and AMNH 41302, female, collected along the line of the Panama railroad, in late 1860 or early 1861, by James McLeannan and John R. Galbraith. From the Lawrence Collection.

COMMENTS: In Part II of Lawrence’s (1861b: 333) Catalogue, he listed at no. 276, male and female, which he tentatively identified as Spermophila aurita and noted (on pp. 315–316) that the collection was made ‘‘during the past winter’’ by McLeannan and Galbraith, mostly on the Atlantic slope of the Isthmus. The exceptions to an Atlantic slope locality did not include no. 276. In the original description, Lawrence (1863: 10) described both male and female, and the above specimens are the only two specimens that Lawrence identified as semicollaris .

Spermophila semicollaris was synonymized with Sporophila aurita aurita by Hellmayr (1938: 191). Olson (1981b) found the male syntype of semicollaris to fall at HI 2 on his hybrid index and considered it part of the stable hybrid population he referred to as ‘‘auritis.’’As was the case with fortipes , above, both Olson and Stiles (1996) considered semicollaris to be an intergrade between corvina and hicksii in what is now the species Sporophila corvina .