Cyornis infuscata Hartert, 1902

Mlíkovský, Jiří, 2011, Nomenclatural notes on Cyornis and Rhinomyias flycatchers (Aves: Muscicapidae) of South-East Asia, Zootaxa 2985, pp. 64-68 : 66

“ Cyornis infuscata Hartert, 1902 ”

Hartert (1902: 550) used “ Cyornis unicolor infuscata (Blyth) ” as a valid name for a taxon, attributing infuscata to Blyth (1870: 165). Robinson and Kinnear (1928: 256) believed that Hartert (1902) used infuscata in a manner different from Blyth (1870), because in their opinion: (1) Hartert (1902) used the name for a subspecies of Cyornis unicolor flycatcher, while Blyth’s (1870) specimens of infuscata turned out to be representatives of a Rhinomyias flycatcher ( Finsch 1901a, b), and (2) a syntype of infuscata in the BMNH represented a Cyornis olivacea Hume, 1877 , flycatcher. However, Robinson and Kinnear (1928) erred in both points. First, Hartert (1902) believed that Blyth (1870) applied the name infuscata to females of C. unicolor (sensu lato) and used it in the same sense. It is irrelevant here that those type specimens later turned out to be representatives of a different species. Second, the BMNH specimen (BMNH 1878.11.12.29) never was part of the type series upon which infuscata was based ( Dickinson et al. 2002: 209). Hartert (1902: 550) thus did not create a new name in the sense of the Code ( ICZN 1999) and the species name [ Cyornis ] infuscata of Hartert (1902) never did exist.

The specimen identified by Hartert (1902) as Cyornis infuscata , now AMNH 605491, was independently designated by Robinson and Kloss (1918: 155) and Dickinson et al. (2002: 211) as the lectotype of Cyornis infuscata Hartert, 1902 (see LeCroy 2008: 96). Names which are not available for nomenclatural purposes have no namebearing types ( ICZN 1999). Hence, the actions by Robinson and Kinnear (1928) and Dickinson et al. (2002) are invalid and the specimen AMNH 605491 has no type status.