Lamprospiza charmesi Penard and Penard

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 : 62-63

Lamprospiza charmesi Penard and Penard

Lamprospiza charmesi Penard and Penard, 1910: 463 (Pararakweg, Surinam).

Now Lamprospiza melanoleuca (Vieillot, 1817) . See Hellmayr, 1936: 437–438, Isler and Isler, 1999: 51–53, and Dickinson, 2003: 803.

? SYNTYPES: AMNH 511552 , female, 12 January 1906 ; AMNH 511553 , (Putscher no. 27), adult male, 14 December 1905 ; AMNH 511554 , adult male, 4 January 1906, all collected in the interior of Surinam by H.R. Putscher. From the Rothschild Collection .

COMMENTS: In the original description, the Penards did not indicate the number of specimens in their type series, saying only that the new species was named for E. Charmes because the first specimens of the species were collected by him on the Pararakweg. There is no specimen collected by E. Charmes in AMNH, and the above three specimens are the only Surinam specimens of L. melanoleuca . Putscher is not mentioned by the Penards and there is nothing on the labels to indicate that they ever belonged to the Penards; in fact, the Rothschild labels on the Putscher specimens are printed ‘‘H.R. Putscher’’. Hartert did not mention L. charmesi in any of his lists of types in the Rothschild Collection. However, Hellmayr (1936: 437–438), in listing L charmesi as a synonym of L. melanoleuca , noted that the syntypes had been in the Rothschild Museum and were now in AMNH, and all three bear AMNH type labels, apparently attached by Zimmer (1947b: 22), who referred to these as syntypes.

T.E. Penard (1924: 145–168), Peters (1937: 232–234), Haverschmidt (1949: 56), and Haverschmidt and Mees (1994: 23) published important information on the Penards. The brothers F.P. and A.P. Penard suffered from leprosy. Unable to do fieldwork themselves, they depended on friends to collect birds for them. They, along with T.E. Penard, were three of four Penard brothers interested in natural history. The W.A. Penard, who is noted below as corresponding with Rothschild, was probably the fourth brother and the William Penard who supplied data to both Peters and Haverschmidt. The Penard collection consisted of about 875 specimens, which had been purchased from them by Rothschild to enable volume one of their book to be published (in 1908). A printout of Surinam ( Dutch Guiana) specimens in AMNH, kindly provided by T. Trombone, shows only 116 specimens attributed to Penard, collected between the years 1899 and 1902. These specimens have very distinctive trapezoidal labels and ‘‘W.A. Penard’’ written by Hartert on the reverse of the Rothschild label There is no record of a purchase of specimens from Penard in the partial list of Rothschild’s purchases held in the Ornithology Department Archives. However, there is an entry on 20 August 1902, ‘‘Recd fr. Surinam’’ 123 specimens, which proved to relate to the Penard specimens. Further checking permitted other connections to be made, and it now seems probable that these three specimens considered syntypes were among the birds purchased by Rothschild to enable the Penards to publish volume one of their work. They probably were seen by the Penards, but this could not be verified.

Using the spreadsheet provided by T. Trombone, I obtained the names of W.A. Penard, B. Chunkoo, and H.R. Putscher, who were listed as collectors of Surinam birds for Rothschild between 1902 and 1908. Through the courtesy of Louise Clarke and Lorraine Portch, Archives and Records Management, BMNH, London, I received copies of letters written to Rothschild or Hartert between those years by the three correspondents. References to shipments of birdskins in the letters are compared in appendix 1 to Rothschild’s purchases of Surinam birds between 1902 and 1908 (in Rothschild’s partial list of purchases, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH). From this comparison, it became evident that there was a close correspondence between the information in the letters and what Rothschild actually purchased. By early 1906, Rothschild had become reluctant to purchase large lots of specimens, apparently including many duplicates. The number of specimens selected by Rothschild up to May 1905 and the April 1906 shipment for which we know he paid, totals 892, indeed close to the 875 given by Haverschmidt and others. It isn’t clear how many of the nearly 1000 birds shipped by Putscher in December 1905 or the 42 received from Chunkoo in May 1907 were kept by Rothschild (appendix 1).

Penard and Penard, in the original description, had doubtfully included Pará, Brazil, specimens in their new form. Hellmayr (1905: 276, not Hartert and Berlepsch, as said by Penard and Penard, 1910: 464) had published on a collection made by A. Robert in Pará and had reported that the two specimens collected by Robert had blood red bills and that two other specimens in the Rothschild Collection, collected earlier by Steere in Pará, had faded to yellow. As Hellmayr had not indicated that the specimens had black at the base of the bill, Penard and Penard had doubtfully included Pará specimens in their new species, which did have black at the base of the bill. Because these Pará specimens were doubtfully attributed to L. charmesi , they are not part of the type series (ICZN, 1999: 76, Art. 72.4.1).