Ramphocelus chrysopterus Boucard, 1891

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 : 80

Ramphocelus chrysopterus Boucard

Ramphocelus chrysopterus Boucard, 1891: 53 (State of Panama, Columbia [sic]).

Now considered an intergrade between R. f. flammigerus and R. f. icteronotus . See Hartert, 1919: 150, Griscom, 1932a, Hellmayr, 1936: 261–264, Isler and Isler, 1999: 175–176, and Dickinson, 2003: 806.

SYNTYPE: AMNH 510037, adult male. PROBABLE SYNTYPE: AMNH 510038, adult male. Both specimens said to have been collected in Panama, undated. From the Boucard Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: When Boucard named this form, he described the male and said that he had received two that were exactly alike. Hellmayr (1936: 263, footnote), in commenting on R. chrysopterus , noted that he had seen the four specimens marked as ‘‘typical specimens’’ by Boucard and housed in Paris and in the Rothschild Museum. The above two specimens are the two that came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection and are marked ‘‘typical specimen’’ by Boucard. Hartert (1919: 150) listed them as ‘‘ Type (or cotypes, the author having had two specimens, both in the [Rothschild Collection], both marked by the author ‘typical specimen’),’’ and noted that Rothschild bought them both from Boucard in 1891. Reflecting Hartert’s uncertainty, only AMNH 510037 had a Rothschild type label.

Boucard’s annotations on his labels for the two specimens differ slightly: On AMNH 510037, he has written ‘‘ Ramphocelus chrysopterus n. sp.,’’ a reference to the description in ‘‘H Bird 1.53, 1891,’’ and ‘‘Typical specimen’’ underlined in red, probably by Hartert as he often did when the specimen was important. On the reverse of this label in what appears to be Boucard’s hand is written ‘‘Bought from Boucard, 1891.’’

AMNH 510038 is labeled by Boucard as ‘‘ Ramphocelus chrysopterus ,’’ without a ref- erence to the description, and ‘‘Typical specimen,’’ not underlined in red. The reverse of the label is blank. An AMNH type label marked ‘‘probable syntype’’ has been added to this specimen.

C. Voisin (personal commun.) has checked the specimens of this form in MNHN and found that none are labeled ‘‘Typical specimen’’ by Boucard, even though he often so labeled specimens when they were not, in fact, part of a type series. H. van Grouw (personal commun.) also checked possible specimens at BMNH and found none that might have been one of Boucard’s types.

Thus, I cannot explain Hellmayr’s statement that he examined four specimens marked ‘‘typical specimen’’ and am tentatively accepting the above two specimens as the syntypes of Ramphocelus chrysopterus Boucard, 1891 . There are seven additional Boucard specimens labeled chrysopterus with rumps of varying shades from red-orange to yellow-orange that were part of the Rothschild Collection. One was collected in 1896; the others are undated and have no indication that they might have been part of Boucard’s type series.

Griscom (1932a) considered R. chrysopterus to be a hybrid between R. flammigerus and R. icteronotus . And this explanation seems to be generally accepted. Dickinson (2003: 806) retained flammigerus and icteronotus as subspecies of R. flammigerus , because of the widespread intergradation between them.